Janet Goelz Hoffman concentrates her practice on the use of financial products in the public finance markets. She regularly acts as bond counsel, underwriter's counsel, borrower's counsel or credit enhancer's counsel in financings for nonprofit organizations including hospital systems, cultural and educational institutions, and continuing care retirement communities. She also advises nonprofit organizations on board governance and conflict of interest issues.
Some of the more unusual financings Janet has been involved in include capital financings for a college dorm sponsored by three universities, a well-established opera company, a major contemporary art museum, several Indian-affiliated corporations and an urban public radio station. In the health care sector, Janet has handled several financings (both taxable and tax-exempt) for physician groups, numerous financings that established major health care systems, and capital financings for children's, rehabilitation and other specialty hospitals. She has completed health care financings that enabled a hospital to withdraw from a religiously affiliated health care system, substituting its own debt, and facilitated the purchase of a for-profit hospital and its conversion to nonprofit status.
Janet has been involved in a variety of continuing care retirement community financings, including many start-up continuing care retirement communities, workouts of failing retirement communities, and the first variable-rate, credit-enhanced financing for continuing care retirement communities done in the country. Her work with educational and research institutions has included several major capital financings for a regional cancer research center and many financings for colleges, universities, and private and charter schools.
In addition, Janet is extremely active in community organizations. She is the president of the board of directors of the Leslie Shankman School Corporation that owns and operates the Hyde Park Day School and the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School. She is also a member of the boards of directors of Three Crowns Park, a 125-year-old retirement community (Chair, 2012-2013), Three Crowns Foundation, and the University of Chicago Foundation for Emotionally Disturbed Children. She has served on the team that successfully negotiated a new electricity franchise with Commonwealth Edison on behalf of the City of Evanston, Illinois.
Janet is a regular panelist at the National Association of Bond Lawyers Bond Attorneys' Workshop and annually contributes to Financial Products: Taxation, Regulation and Design (CCH) with respect to municipal securities. She also wrote the chapter "Keys to Public Finance Success" in Winning Legal Strategies for Public Finance Lawyers: Leading Lawyers on Government Debt, State Law, and Federal Tax (Aspatore Books, 2005).
