Mr. Middlebrook advises his clients on a wide range of legal issues including corporate structure and governance, employment and volunteer practices, intellectual property, and compensation practices. Mr. Middlebrook serves as outside general counsel to a number of nonprofit organizations, while many others use his services as special nonprofit corporate counsel. Mr. Middlebrook also serves his clients in the role of literary and music agent and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars on legal subjects affecting religious nonprofit organizations. He is an award-winning author and has published numerous articles on nonprofit topics. Mr. Middlebrook is a founding shareholder of Middlebrook | Goodspeed, PLLC.

Representative Engagements

• Assisted a media-based church ministry in responding to an inquiry by Senator Charles Grassley and the Senate Finance Committee into the church’s activities and operations that raised novel and complex issues, including the permissible scope of congressional inquiries, the protections afforded churches and their members by the First Amendment, and the interplay between congressional inquiries and the protections afforded to churches by section 7611 of the Internal Revenue Code, which provides special rules for IRS inquiries and examinations of churches. Managed a team of outside experts to prepare a coordinated response including lobbying counsel, tax counsel, and religious and constitutional scholars.
• Successfully resolved a three-year long IRS church tax inquiry and examination of an international church-based ministry on a “no change” basis that preserved the tax-exempt status of the organization and confirmed its status as a church for federal tax purposes.
• Counseled churches and religious organizations on the availability and requirements for providing parsonages and housing allowances to church leaders.