Tax or corporate? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'm a current SA at a large non-NY market firm. I am wrapping up my SA time and will be expected to have a practice area figured out.

I'm mostly interested in either tax or corporate.

I have not had the opportunity to speak with many of the corporate attorneys because they are constantly busy. The tax attorneys seem to have a lot of spare time to meet with me.

My main concern is the ability to lateral/go in house/go gov. I don't want to rely on staying long. I'm afraid of getting laid off/hating my life.

My understanding is that for both tax and transactional its basically up for grabs, I just have to choose. Transactional desperately needs people for everything.

Which would be better for employability? Is one better? I'm not attached to specifically in house work, just having and exit option in case I get laid off/despise big law.

[Grazzhoppa]

Corporate obviously. At least the corporate bros are doing deals. Imagine just marking up docs to correct tax provisions all day (I.e. what I imagine tax attorneys do 90% of the time).

[Anonymous User]

If you are only concerned with generic exit opportunities, then go with corporate. If you are interested in tax, do tax. Tax is generally a less brutal life and people who are interested in it generally like it. But if you don't like tax, it would be miserable. If you've taken any advanced tax class in law school and enjoyed it, you probably won't hate the practice. Generally, it's one of the more academic practices but whether that is good or bad depends on you. It also takes longer to get a baseline of understanding as you have a whole mountain of law to learn and you will probably be covering the whole range of corporate transactions your firm deals with. So if you want to jump out quick corporate may be better.

The first person who replied should be ignored. Imagine marking up the rest of deal documents...must be so much more stimulating than learning tax law/dealing with the tax provisions...I'm sure 'Grazzhoppa' is absolutely crushing deals all day. What a legend.

[nealric]

Corporate obviously. At least the corporate bros are doing deals. Imagine just marking up docs to correct tax provisions all day (I.e. what I imagine tax attorneys do 90% of the time).

That's what corporate attorneys see tax attorneys doing, but it's hardly 90% of the work. More like 20-30%. For juniors, there's a lot of research and writing type assignments (memos and opinions). You'll also get into overall deal structuring work as you get more senior.

Anyhow, whether tax is a good choice is very much dependent on whether you like tax or not. Some people do (I do), some people hate it. Hours in biglaw typically aren't less than other groups, but are more consistent (less feast/famine). There are fewer emergencies, so you can plan your life better. Overall, tax folks tend to be happier than corporate folks.

Both offer good in-house opportunities. I went in-house after 3 years in biglaw tax.

[notinbiglaw]

Tax has more opportunities for less brutal hours but you are going to hate every waking moment if you don't like tax.

But some tax groups are mainly support for corporate (or PE) groups and their hours can be just as brutal, if not worse because they often get slammed at the last minute.

[Anonymous User]

I was gung-ho about tax during law school, took all the tax classes and loved them, went into my summer expressing only an interest in tax, and joined my firm as a tax associate. I ended up asking to switch me to corporate at the end of my first year.

Sure the hours were great, I almost never took my laptop home when I left the office for the evening and hardly ever did weekend work (I think this will change once you're a mid-level/senior tax associate staffed on 15 deals at once), but I hated the research and writing, which is what I was doing 90% of the time. Spending hours on Checkpoint, reading the regs and court opinions, summarizing legal conclusions IRAC style, and writing memos and opinions was making me miserable. I also felt a lot of FOMO w/r/t my corporate colleagues. Being a specialist sucks, you're out of loop on the big picture of the deal except when corporate sends you a bunch of documents and needs you to mark up discrete sections ASAP (and I say this as a current M&A associate -- I'm sorry for what we do to our specialists!).

Absolutely no regrets, I find the pace of corporate work more exciting and I like being a more well rounded lawyer and being client facing. I suppose the only mild regret is that I was excellent at tax and am a pretty average M&A associate, so gave up potential partnership prospects, but that's a crapshoot anyways.

Anon because I'm sure I could be identified from this fact pattern.

[Anonymous User]

lol at being "excellent" at tax as a first-year.

[Anonymous User]

tax better suits intellectual, introverted folks. it requires spending more time just thinking about stuff. that can be good for a certain kind of person and very hard for others.

corporate is better suited for grinders and extroverts. folks tend to excel by either grinding or schmoozing. although the best corporate lawyers are very bright (among lawyers, at least), most are remarkably dumb IME.

there are obviously many more corporate lawyer openings, both in big law and in house. on the other hand, corporate associates have historically been the first to go (at least in biglaw) when the economy slows down; tax folks are significantly less fungible/harder to train, and so tend to hang on a bit longer. personally, i've seen many, many corporate associates pushed out or laid off because of a slowdown, but my current firm's laid off only one tax associate in my decade-ish tenure.

the earnings potential of corporate lawyers is also generally much higher (although the odds of getting there may be lower than making partner as a tax lawyer). the rate of burnout for corporate is also probably much higher than for tax folks, though that kind of thing always depends on the particular people you work for. i tend to think that you can jump in-house from corporate sooner/more easily, but that it's also easier/more common to stick around longer in tax because the lifestyle is generally better and the work more interesting (for those who like the mental stimulation).

also:

Corporate obviously. At least the corporate bros are doing deals. Imagine just marking up docs to correct tax provisions all day (I.e. what I imagine tax attorneys do 90% of the time).

having done both corporate and tax, it's kind of the opposite - corporate associates are the paper-pushing peons; tax folks spend only a fraction of their time actually marking things up. as you get more senior, it shifts a bit, of course, but generally speaking tax lawyers spend an order of magnitude more time just thinking about stuff than corporate lawyers. (for good reason - as alluded to above, most corporate lawyers are imbeciles.)

[2013]

Corporate obviously. At least the corporate bros are doing deals. Imagine just marking up docs to correct tax provisions all day (I.e. what I imagine tax attorneys do 90% of the time).

Imagine spending all day sitting in calls taking notes, chasing specialists down for markups and then copying and pasting those comments into a merger agreement. That’s what “doing deals” looks like for many corporate juniors.

[Anonymous User]

OP here.

I won't lie. The legal research/writing has generally been my least favorite part of law school. I'm not very good at it, either. Bores me out of my mind, even if it's intellectually harder.

I also consider myself extroverted in terms of motivation. I am 100% more productive when on, or expecting, a phone call, zoom call, or meeting. That is a weakness of mine I admit.

Based on what I have read so far and the assignments I recieved I am leaning towards corporate.

[unlicensedpotato]

OP here.

I won't lie. The legal research/writing has generally been my least favorite part of law school. I'm not very good at it, either. Bores me out of my mind, even if it's intellectually harder.

I also consider myself extroverted in terms of motivation. I am 100% more productive when on, or expecting, a phone call, zoom call, or meeting. That is a weakness of mine I admit.

Based on what I have read so far and the assignments I recieved I am leaning towards corporate.

Yeah, you should definitely do corporate then.

[nealric]

OP here.

I won't lie. The legal research/writing has generally been my least favorite part of law school. I'm not very good at it, either. Bores me out of my mind, even if it's intellectually harder.

I also consider myself extroverted in terms of motivation. I am 100% more productive when on, or expecting, a phone call, zoom call, or meeting. That is a weakness of mine I admit.

Based on what I have read so far and the assignments I recieved I am leaning towards corporate.

Yeah, coming from a tax person, I don't think tax is for you. Good tax people can be sociable, but the few true extroverts I've known in tax ended up leaving the field.