Frank Cummings

Washington, DC

Frank Cummings is a Washington, DC lawyer, law professor, and occasional expert witness. He has been a specialist in pensions, employee benefits, employment and labor law for over 45 years. Cummings is a graduate of Columbia University Law School (LL.B. 1958), where he was Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. He also earned a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Columbia University (M.A. 1955). He is a member of the District of Columbia and New York bars.
He practiced law for many years at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene and MacRae, LLP (former partner and head of the benefits practice group) and with several other firms in New York and Washington. Previously he served as Minority Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and was Administrative Assistant/Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator Jacob K. Javits during the development of ERISA. He designed and drafted the original Javits pension reform bill (1967), which was the first of Senator Javits' proposals that eventually became ERISA.
He has testified as an employee benefits expert at the invitation of the Chairs of various Congressional committees, including the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee in 1973 hearings before enactment of ERISA, the U.S. House Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities (1995 and 1999) in hearings on ERISA amendments, the U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee (1995) in hearings on ERISA amendments, and the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations of the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, U.S. House of Representatives (1996) also on ERISA amendments, and at the invitation of the Chair of the U.S. Department of Labor's Advisory Committee on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans, Working Group on Challenges to the Employment-Based Health Care System.
He is currently an Adjunct Lecturer in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law (Charlottesville, VA) and an Adjunct Professor of Law at John Marshall Law School (Chicago), and until recently was an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University Law School and a Lecturer at Columbia Law School, in each case teaching courses in pension and health benefit law. He is a Life Member of the American Law Institute (and a member of its panel of Advisors on the new Restatement of Employment Law), a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel, and a Fellow of The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. He is a former member of the U.S. Department of Labor's Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans, and a former member of the Advisory Board of the BNA Pension Reporter,
Cummings is the author of numerous publications in the employee benefits field, including a BNA Tax Management Portfolio, Pension Plan Terminations--Single Employer Plans (TM357-4th-2002) (4th Ed. 2007). He is a frequent lecturer on employee benefits, ERISA litigation, labor and employment law in courses given by the American Law Institute-American Bar Association Committee on Continuing Professional Education, and for many years as Chairman of the ALI-ABA Annual Course in Employee Benefits Litigation, and Co-Chairman of the ALI-ABA Annual Course in Employment and Labor Law. He is listed in Who's Who in America.

PBGC Issues

Fiduciary/Other Title I Issues

In addition to more than 40 years of practice in this field, I have lectured and taught this subject at U VA, Columbia, NYU and other law schools, and at various ALI-ABA and ABA courses.

Fiduciary/Other Title I Issues