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Question is all in title. Current liberal arts major planning on law school and trying to think ahead and explore all options. I already know a tax LLM is more practical than a MAcc and even then one doesnt have to have an LLM to practice tax law. I'm strictly curious if anyone has taken the path I've described or knows someone who has. I can't find anything on the internet about it. Thanks!

Entirely unnecessary unless of course you want to do it because you want to be an accountant for a few years after graduating from school (or maybe you will like it and decide to forego law school, which is not a terrible idea). Also, you'll need relevant work experience on top of studying for and passing the exams to actually get the CPA designation. Think it varies from state to state what the requirement is, and I can't recall if its 1 year of work under someone who is a CPA. In terms of the exam, takes about 3 months per test (x4 tests) if you're cycling through all of them and can manage to study efficiently while working full time, though a lot of people end up spacing them apart even more or fail one, etc. I think its harder than things like the bar exam.

Agree with the above. Huge waste of time and money if you end up getting a JD anyway, and might look weird on your resume for law-school apps and OCI. Get a job in a accounting if you want to explore the field.

The Lsat Airbender wrote:Agree with the above. Huge waste of time and money if you end up getting a JD anyway, and might look weird on your resume for law-school apps and OCI. Get a job in a accounting if you want to explore the field.

I don't think it will look weird and in fact, not being K-JD (provided you actually work for a year or two in the field and earn your CPA) will probably boost your experience at OCI recruiting and admissions (of course all of this is just a soft compared to (a) your LSAT and gpa score for admissions and (b) your law school grades for OCI). So in conclusion, definitely don't get a masters in accounting just to take the CPA exam if you have no interest in working as an accountant for a few years. The CPA is useless once you actually start your legal job.

So to everyone here a CPA is useless in the legal world unless it's earned before JD? Nobody should do it after JD Via a MAcc?

bigballer3232 wrote:So to everyone here a CPA is useless in the legal world unless it's earned before JD? Nobody should do it after JD Via a MAcc?

You should get a CPA if you want to be an accountant. You should get a JD if you want to be a lawyer. There is little real-world value in getting both credentials (in either order) because there is little demand for lawyer-accountants. A CPA also holds very little value for law school admissions purposes because law school admissions turns almost solely on undergraduate GPA (as calculated by LSAC) and (highest) LSAT score. Everything else matters only around the margins, so it's never worth pursuing an additional credential solely or primarily in order to boost one's law school admissions odds.

While we're at it, you should also not be contemplating a Tax LL.M. at this juncture. Attend a good enough law school and you won't need the Tax LL.M. to land a good job.

QContinuum wrote:

bigballer3232 wrote:So to everyone here a CPA is useless in the legal world unless it's earned before JD? Nobody should do it after JD Via a MAcc?

You should get a CPA if you want to be an accountant. You should get a JD if you want to be a lawyer. There is little real-world value in getting both credentials (in either order) because there is little demand for lawyer-accountants. A CPA also holds very little value for law school admissions purposes because law school admissions turns almost solely on undergraduate GPA (as calculated by LSAC) and (highest) LSAT score. Everything else matters only around the margins, so it's never worth pursuing an additional credential solely or primarily in order to boost one's law school admissions odds.

While we're at it, you should also not be contemplating a Tax LL.M. at this juncture. Attend a good enough law school and you won't need the Tax LL.M. to land a good job.

Thanks for your response; it makes total sense. My question for you is how do you explain joint JD/MAcc programs if there is no real-world value im gaining both a JD and a CPA?

Two possibilities:
1) Schools are just happy to take people's money (this is absolutely true).
2) The joint degree does make rational sense for some tiny number of people in unique situations, but not enough to be worth talking about and not enough or with enough predictability to make sense to contemplate prospectively (I suspect there is a grain of truth to this...only a Sith deals in absolutes so I doubt the degree is truly worthless to every human. I mean, even art history degrees turn out to be objectively valuable to a FEW people on earth.)

Also, from Googling, those programs seem fairly rare and are mostly offered by schools, like UVA, that pretty much allow for any dual-degree program one can imagine. It's not at all an established "program" like many schools' JD/MBA systems or that Cornell thing where you go to France.

JD/CPA here - just chiming in to agree that a MACC/MBT+CPA is really weird if you already have a JD. If you have a JD, you can already technically do everything that a CPA can outside of signing an audit opinion (i.e. practice before the IRS).

If you are really interested in getting a CPA, do it before law school. Some accounting experience (especially Big4) is great to have on the resume, both for OCI in law school and for an in house job, should you decide that private practice sucks.

dabigchina wrote:JD/CPA here - just chiming in to agree that a MACC/MBT+CPA is really weird if you already have a JD. If you have a JD, you can already technically do everything that a CPA can outside of signing an audit opinion (i.e. practice before the IRS).

Pardon me for the possibly dumb question, but I was under the impression that (non-CPA) lawyers are permitted to practice before the IRS, on an equal basis as CPAs and EAs?

dabigchina wrote:If you are really interested in getting a CPA, do it before law school. Some accounting experience (especially Big4) is great to have on the resume, both for OCI in law school and for an in house job, should you decide that private practice sucks.

I agree. If OP is interested in accounting, they should absolutely get a CPA and work as an accountant for a few years and see how things go. They may decide they're perfectly happy being an accountant, and realize they don't need to go to law school. Or they may decide they'd still prefer to be a lawyer, in which case the accounting work experience will look good and impressive on the interview circuit.

What wouldn't be helpful is getting a CPA, then going straight to law school without acquiring any real-world accounting work experience (beyond the minimum required as part of obtaining the CPA).

Halp wrote:2) The joint degree does make rational sense for some tiny number of people in unique situations, but not enough to be worth talking about and not enough or with enough predictability to make sense to contemplate prospectively (I suspect there is a grain of truth to this...only a Sith deals in absolutes so I doubt the degree is truly worthless to every human. I mean, even art history degrees turn out to be objectively valuable to a FEW people on earth.)

I love the above! Yes, there are almost always exceptions to the rule. I'm sure, likewise, that some folks get real mileage out of a JD/Master's in Environmental Science, or a JD/MHA, or a JD/MPP, or even a JD/MD. Still, these programs generally don't add value and generally don't make sense.