Chris Chochon

Chris Chochon 

Sioux City Associate

Chris is a tax-focused estate planning and business transactions attorney who helps individuals, families, and business owners safeguard what matters most through thoughtful consideration and diligent planning. The scope of Chris’s estate planning services include personalized estate plans, revocable and irrevocable trusts, wills, probate administration, business succession planning, and strategic wealth transfer solutions designed to minimize tax burdens and provide lasting peace of mind. Chris’s business background allows him to provide your business with proactive solutions that combine the protection of sound legal planning and the practical necessities that a business culture requires.

Chris brings sophisticated tax expertise developed as a Mergers & Acquisitions Tax professional at KPMG in Dallas, where he handled complex domestic and cross-border U.S. federal income tax matters—including buy-side and sell-side due diligence, transaction structuring including exit planning, corporate and bankruptcy restructurings, S-Corp status compliance, tax attribute modeling, and partnership tax. The typical transaction size Chris worked on ranged from $100 million to $2 billion. He also collaborated with KPMG’s M&A Tax Technology team to develop and integrate GenAI tools, earning two firmwide M&A Tax GenAI Challenge wins. This hands-on experience with high-stakes tax structuring and planning translates directly to creative, efficient business and estate and gift tax strategies that help clients preserve and transfer wealth across generations. 

Before attending law school, Chris developed a holistic perspective that allows him to see his client’s bigger picture and clearly communicate complex solutions in simple terms. His pre-law background includes managing operations for a startup company that developed, manufactured, and sold neuromuscular exoskeletons; managing newly drilled oil well sites in the oilfields of North Dakota; and teaching English as a foreign language in rural Slovakia and St. Petersburg, Russia. Chris moved to the Sioux City area to marry his wife, Nichole. He has recently taken up golf and could use all the help he can get.

BAR ADMISSIONS

State: Nebraska and Iowa 

EDUCATION  

• Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Taxation, 2023 
  • Recipient, LLM Tax Scholarship 
  • Editor, The Tax Lawyer 
  • American Bar Association Transfer Pricing Mentorship Program  

• Creighton University School of Law, Juris Doctor, 2022 
  • Recipient, Arthur N. Rupe Foundation Grant 
  • Co-Author, The Roberts Court and Compulsory Collective Bargaining: Reading the Tea Leaves after Janus, published in The Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy 
  • Volunteer, Juvenile Justice Clinic 
  • Participant in the American Bar Association Law Student Tax Challenge  

• University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice, minor in Psychology, 2013 
  • `Vice President—Criminal Justice Student Association

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

• American Bar Association, Section of Taxation  
• Nebraska State Bar Association
• Dallas Bar Association  

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT 

• Boy Scouts of America – Eagle Scout; Former Assistant Scoutmaster 
• Assisted single-parent children with remote education during the COVID-19 epidemic;
• Former Sunday school teacher
• High stakes mission trips in Southeast Asia