Our Team
John Butler
John is the founding attorney and current managing partner at the firm. John grew up in Amherst, New Hampshire. Strategy and tactical thinking were drilled into him from an early age: he took his first chess lesson around age four and didn’t stop until, among innumerable other championships, a national chess title in Charlotte in 1999. After high school John attended Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, graduating with a major in Computer Science and Mathematics.
A full academic scholarship to Tulane Law School brought John down from the North to New Orleans in 2004, where he met his wife, Dr. Isolde Butler, and has stayed ever since. John has operated his own firm in complex tax planning and defense for the past fourteen years. In that time, John has personally handled thousands of advisory cases, tax workouts, criminal defenses and requests for specific tax advice on behalf of clients ranging from individuals to local businesses to Fortune 500 financial institutions.
John fondly describes defending his clients as playing chess on paper.
David M. McDonald
David is a partner in the firm. David was born in Metairie, Louisiana into a family that was directly involved in the hospitality industry. Following this, David played saxophone in the marching band at LSU and graduated with a major in Sociology. David travelled north for law school at Ave Maria School of Law in Michigan. Prior to joining the firm, David gained an enormous amount of trial and litigation experience representing corporate interests, including some of the largest insurance firms in the State, in both federal and state courts. David is one of the few lawyers who is a Certified Litigation Management Professional. David also brings significant experience at the appellate level and has practiced for well over a decade in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, the highest federal court in Louisiana.
Together with his team, David is in charge of all civil issues at the firm across a wide range of industries and represents both plaintiffs and defendants. Typically, David will tell a client that when they are staring at a legal problem and telling themselves “I literally have no idea what to do” that they should call him. To this day, David is the only lawyer to have ever beaten John in a federal jury trial.
Henry Dahlen
Henry Dahlen is from Monterey County, California. Henry graduated from William & Mary with a degree in History before heading south for law school. Since joining the firm directly after graduation from Tulane Law School Henry has been trained exclusively by John. He is the firm’s primary conduit to the IRS and the Department of the Treasury.
John D. Perez
John Perez was born in Cebu City, Philippines. He immigrated to the US as a child and grew up in West Monroe, Louisiana. After majoring in Cellular and Molecular Biology at LSU, John decided to pursue a career in law. He attended Loyola Law School, where he worked as a student practitioner at the Stuart H. Smith Law Clinic and Center for Social Justice. Mr. Perez began his career at Law Office of John Butler as a contract attorney, but his work was so impressive he was quickly brought on as a full-time associate.