Tax LLM Admission q's Forum

[llmq8080]

I am a rising 3L at a T25 JD program considering an LL.M in tax. I was wondering if any current or former LL.M's could provide some insight on my chances of admission/possibility of scholarships at NYU or Georgetown's tax LL.M programs. A couple of relevant points:

- Class rank: right around top 10% (maybe slightly above or below - rankings have not yet been released)

- Tax courses: school only offers a few, but I earned an A in baby-tax and an A- in corporate. I'll be taking partnership (only other tax class offered) in the spring.

- Tax experience: doing some tax work this summer focusing on corporate/partnership tax at a midsize firm (told it won't lead to offer), will be externing with IRS in the fall, wrote journal (I'm on my school's law review) comment on a tax issue.

- reason for considering tax: tax classes have been my favorite. I like the work I'm doing so far this summer. have been told that llm really helpful in breaking into tax.

- debt: none leaving law school, but would have to take on at least tuition debt for an LL.M (CoL would be either fully covered (if in D.C.) or at least partially covered (if in NYC).

- goals - ideally would like to end up in D.C., but would be open to NYC for a brief (3 years max). Biglaw would be number one preference, but would happy at Big4 in the DC area as well.

I'd be interested in hearing advice based on the above, as well as possibilities of admission with scholarship at either NYU or GT.

Thanks.

[icansortofmath]

You will get admitted for sure, most likely within days you complete your application. I don’t know about scholarships.

You should look at the Tax OCI TIP threads. Long and short of it is you will probably get biglaw of some kind (on strength of your JD grades) and possibly before first semester grades come out (especially if you had biglaw experience).

I don’t know about DC personally but people think DC positions are hard to get.

[UnfrozenCaveman]

The above poster is right. Have you looked into doing you 3L year at one of those programs and trying to get the tax LLM in one additional semester?

[llmq8080]

Appreciate the feedback, and I'll look into those threads, as well as the 3L year away thing. Any opinions on whether or not going to either program would be a good idea given my situation? Total debt load (assuming no scholarship at NYU, the most expensive school for my situation) would likely be around 80k. Not terrible compared to a lot of folks around here, but I'm lucky enough to have not had any debt from UG or law school, so the number does kind of give me sticker-shock.

[icansortofmath]

With your grades you should be able to get biglaw, DOJ honors, or Big 4 (~90k) without Tax LLM.

Unless you are actually interested in tax, I am not sure Tax LLM makes sense for you unless you're basically buying another shot at biglaw after failing to secure biglaw 2L summer. Then tax LLM (even with 90k debt) could make sense (as backup, you should be scrambling to get biglaw out of JD if you're not specifically interested in tax) since the backup outcome would be Big4 ~120k salary and you can recover most, though not all, of the 90k in a few years (relative to a non-biglaw outcome).

[Anonymous User]

GULC callback at TIP

“we know that 25 Georgetown Law students of the 81 who had initial interviews at TIP received callbacks from TIP employers. From the information reported, we know that 24 students received at least one job offer through TIP interviewing or resume collect employers, and 24 of 24 students accepted one of their offers. Out of these 24 students, three students went to law firms, and 21 went to accounting firms.”

https://www.law.georgetown.edu/wp-conte ... FAQ1-2.pdf