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Two of my friends have very different career goals and want to know which realized a better goal now that they are both first year associates. I was hoping TLS could help! (Note that all three of us understand this is a pretentious and elitist debate, but it's good natured.)

Person A had dreams of doing IP/Tech work and completed a Masters in Computer Science and then a JD. He ultimately ended up in BigLaw at a V70-80 firm in Boston in their IP group.

Person B had dreams of doing international tax work and completed a JD and LLM. He ultimately ended up at the Big4 in NYC in their international tax group.

Notwithstanding differences in salary and prestige of the schools their degrees came from, who did better?

(I can't comment as I'm a measly state court law clerk )

Person A by far.

You don't need a JD at all to get into tax at Big 4, in fact it's not even the path of least resistance. Not to say it's a bad gig, but I question the wisdom of a 150K education for a job you can get out of undergrad.

I'm assuming that V70-V80 firm is Fish & Richardson, which is an IP powerhouse. They blew the other person out of the water.

Anonymous User wrote:Person A by far.

You don't need a JD at all to get into tax at Big 4, in fact it's not even the path of least resistance. Not to say it's a bad gig, but I question the wisdom of a 150K education for a job you can get out of undergrad.

International Tax only hires attorneys apparently.

carsondalywashere wrote:I'm assuming that V70-V80 firm is Fish & Richardson, which is an IP powerhouse. They blew the other person out of the water.

No it is not Fish and Richardson. It is a midwestern firm.

International Tax hires M.Acc. and JDs and LLMs. You don’t need to be an attorney.

Your IP friend is better off.

If the Boston atty isn’t at Fish, s/he’s at Foley & Lardner. Still seems like a “better” outcome.

EminentDumain wrote:If the Boston atty isn’t at Fish, s/he’s at Foley & Lardner. Still seems like a “better” outcome.

Agreed. Most Tax LL.M.s can only dream of joining BigLaw - I don't know of a single Tax LL.M. who'd consider the Big4 a "better" outcome than BigLaw. The IP fellow is actually in BigLaw.

I picked big4 because we don't even know if the biglaw guy is going to get to do IP while big4 is definitely doing tax.

I am putting a lot of weight on the words "dream." Most people would consider biglaw better outcome.

I was one of those tax LLMs that turned down biglaw (v10) for big4 and I know for certain I wasn't the only one but we're definitely in the minority. Big 4 was always top of my preference list but I know people for whom the list went like: Biglaw tax >>> big 4 nat tax > big 4 NYC int/M&A >>> Biglaw exec comp.

I think the question is whether the Big4 for a tax LLM is better than a V100 firm for someone who wanted Big Law.

I imagine the Big4 will offer more sophisticated tax work (albeit possibly different than Big Law tax work) than a V100 firm, especially if the practice area at the V100 firm isn’t the firm’s speciality like IP is at Fish & Richardson.

Obviously the Big4 doesn’t compare to V10 firms, but it’s an interesting comparison to a V100 firm.

I think of it like this: assume a law student has “dreams” of Private Equity work and has two offers (a) V100 Big Law in the firm’s PE group or (b) offers from Blackstone, KKR, and Carlyle to work in-house. Which is the better offer, V100 Big Law or top-of-the-line PE shop in house?

If it's not a firm with a good IP department, I'm gonna go with tax guy that got NYC big4.

Not that many law firms do a lot of substantial international tax planning. Most biglaw tax groups just facilitate corporate groups and focus on M&A. Additionally, from what I understand, the NYC & WNT offices of the big4 are considerably harder to get and work on more interesting projects than the secondary offices.