Experts say aspiring tax lawyers who worry about whether they have the correct college major to get a job in the field should take comfort in the fact that their major doesn’t matter.
“You don’t have to have an accounting degree to become a tax attorney, and in my opinion, you don’t even have to have a head for numbers,” says Wayne Wilson, practice chair of the tax, benefits and wealth planning group at Dinsmore & Shohl LLP, a corporate law firm with offices in multiple U.S. cities. “It’s really just a matter of legal theory.”
Although your college major won’t determine whether you can have a tax law career, one thing which does influence your ability to pursue that career is whether you take tax law courses during law school, Wilson says. He says tax law employers are more likely to hire law school graduates with tax law courses on their transcripts.
Wilson, a partner at Dinsmore & Shohl, says aspiring attorneys often avoid tax law courses due to the misguided notion that they involve a lot of math. He says this is a mistake because understanding tax law is also useful for many types of business attorneys.
“Even if you don’t want to be a tax attorney, if you have taken a complement of tax classes in law school, that is going to increase your value to any firm,” he says.
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Another reassuring fact for law school hopefuls with an interest in tax law, experts say, is that demand for tax law services has increased since Congress enacted federal tax reform legislation in December.
“Aspiring tax lawyers should expect to see increased opportunities in the next few years as Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service implement tax reform and taxpayers seek guidance on the new law,” Joshua Wu, a partner with Strasburger & Price , LLP, a law firm with offices in many cities, said via email.
Wilson says numerous temporary tax cuts have resulted in continuous changes to tax rules, which creates a steady stream of work for tax lawyers.
“As long as Congress keeps passing temporary tax cuts, everything is volatile and everything requires a certain amount of planning, and therefore there’s going to continue to be a lot of need for tax attorneys,” he says.
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But even with increased opportunities for tax lawyers, the law school you choose and the coursework it offers will be important when you’re job searching.
Here are five traits experts say you should look for in a law school to determine whether it offers a high-quality tax law curriculum.
1. Varied and plentiful tax law courses: Leandra Lederman, a tax law professor at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University–Bloomington, says it is ideal for a law school to offer standalone courses in each of these three subjects: individual income tax, corporate tax and partnership tax.
Lederman says one way to gauge whether a school teaches tax law well is to ask current law students whether they are satisfied with the tax law curriculum and whether they have been able to sign up for all of the courses they wanted.
It’s best when a law school allows J.D. students to enroll in advanced tax law courses where they can focus on topics like state and local tax, Lederman says . She adds that it’s also beneficial for a school to offer a tax policy colloquium where students can hear the ideas of various tax experts who serve as guest speakers and gain exposure to cutting-edge research in this field.
2. Tax law clinics: Wu says law schools that offer low-income taxpayer clinic programs, where students help provide legal assistance to needy individuals with tax problems, can provide students with valuable tax law work experience.
These clinics “allow students to obtain real-life client experience and show that a school has a commitment to training future tax lawyers,” Wu said via email.
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3. Tax-related extracurricular activities: Lederman says it is a positive sign when a school’s students have opportunities to participate in transactional moot court competitions and to work as research assistants for tax law professors.
She says law school applicants who are curious about what tax law extracurricular activities are available at a specific school should look for details on a school’s website and, if those details are not online, they should ask a school official to provide that information.
4. Expert tax law faculty: Brad Paladini, a tax law attorney based in New Jersey, says it’s prudent to conduct background research on the professors who are teaching tax law courses to determine whether these professors have in-depth knowledge of tax law.
Paladini said via email that law school applicants should ponder the following question: “Have the professors published or practiced in the field of tax or are they really interested in other fields and are merely filling in?”
5. Alumni who work as tax attorneys: Experts say law school applicants should find out whether a significant number of a school’s recent alumni are working as tax lawyers. “To see whether the program has strong tax law job prospects, look at tax law firms in the location where the school is located,” Paladini says. “Do many of the attorneys at the firms have a degree from the school? If so, it’s a good indication the program is strong.”
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How to Find the Right Law School for a Tax Law Career originally appeared on usnews.com
