Date: September 7th, 2007 11:17 AM Author: cerebral garnet bawdyhouse
What's the difference? Why go through three extra years of schooling to come out doing what you could have done with an accounting degree and a CPA? Honest question.
Date: September 7th, 2007 11:42 AM Author: marvelous center
According to my accounting friends who went back for jd, the quality of tax law work is much higher then many accounting areas. Better pay and better career opportunities.
Date: September 7th, 2007 11:59 AM Author: cerebral garnet bawdyhouse
Can you be more specific? How is the quality of tax work much higher? And when is the quality of tax work ever high?
I always hear people throw around terms like "quality of work" is more challenging or higher or what not, but nobody ever explains to me why certain legal work is of a higher quality than other legal work.
Are you saying that accountants don't do any type of planning and all they do is crunch numbers?!? Why does it seem like the tax shelters and stuff are usually devised by the accounting firms?
Better pay is a given... what about career opportunities? What do tax lawyers do after they burn out in biglaw? jump to the big 4?
Date: September 7th, 2007 1:49 PM Author: rusted sex offender
I've heard conflicting reports. Originally, I heard that the hours weren't that bad for McKee's DC office, but recently, I've heard that DC is becoming a lot more like their NYC sweatshop.
Date: September 7th, 2007 1:53 PM Author: rusted sex offender
I'm pretty sure they do (although not 100%). They also boast that they pay above market salary. I don't know if that is still true after the bump to 160.
Date: September 7th, 2007 1:27 PM Author: marvelous center
Also-tax controversy work, which is litigation that can be interesting. Dealing with the tax complications of a major deal is pretty intellectually stimulating, i suspect
Date: September 7th, 2007 1:42 PM Author: marvelous center
I don't know what physics has to do with anything. Are you saying analyzing a tax transaction is less interesting from a legal perspective then a rico case?
Date: September 7th, 2007 1:53 PM Author: marvelous center
I was under the impression that physics IS interesting...So I wasn't sure what you were getting at. If you mean that physics is mind-numbingly boring, then well I understand. I enjoyed my physics courses....so who knows maybe I like boring shit.
If you have a shit accounting degree you're not going to work for the Big 4 either. You're going to be a bookkeeper for your local suburban school district
Date: September 7th, 2007 1:44 PM Author: mind-boggling pozpig national Subject: Outside of XO, you'd be surprised...
Also, I was merely trying to point out that accounting has that one advantage over law (i.e. you don't need to graduate from a highly ranked accounting program to land a job at a big 4).
that's true, but I still tend to think that people who go to law school and end up at 80k/year jobs are still better off than big4 people. The qol at big4 is horrible, especially in audit and consulting, and those are the places with all the exit options. Plus, you can't stay if you aren't promoted, and that's no longer the case at most law firms.
My uncle was a partner at a big 4, in audit. The atmosphere is work all the time, get drunk once in a while, see you family on occasion, and divorce your wife every 5 or 7 years. Many partners are on their third wives.
similar to a big law firm I'd imagine, except you have the up or out stuff coming at you every few years instead of just once. It's impossible to make partner, and it takes a minimum of 12 years. Maybe 1 person out of 50 makes manager, and 1 manager out of 5 makes partner. of course, the money is less at every level than a big law firm, including at partner, where the take home is around 600k now or something
Date: September 7th, 2007 2:40 PM Author: mind-boggling pozpig national Subject: That sucks, I'm considering becoming an accountant...
because:
1) It doesn't seem as prestige obsessed as law, and I would have a better chance of ending up at a top accounting firm than at a top law firm.
2) I want to ultimately become an entrepreneur and accounting will probably be more useful.
3) There seems to be more job security in accounting (for someone like me who doesn't stand a chance at a t10 law school). Oh yeah, the opportunities to work abroad seem far easier and broader in accounting than law.
I dont think it's a horrible profession or anything, but it's not as cozy as law. Even if you dont make a top firm, if you do well at a decent local school you'll probably be making more than you would as an accountant.
most people do not last 3 years at a big 4. in tax there is a lot less travel but you don't build the network outside the firm that you do in audit or consulting. Auditors are constantly on the road and do the most trivial shit often. They are literally the people who go out to random distribution sites and open random boxes just to see if merchandise is really there.
Date: September 7th, 2007 1:29 PM Author: marvelous center
personality is enough to make up for the boring ass nature of accountancy? maybe so.
Most of the tax lawyers i have met love their jobs. They constitute the small % of lawyers I have met who genuinely recommend their field to others. Tax law also provides an in/out door between the public policy/gov't industry, and private law firms and accountant firms.
Date: September 7th, 2007 1:43 PM Author: mind-boggling pozpig national Subject: They may be fun but is personality an important criterion...
that the Big 4 looks for? I mean accountants don't exactly have a reputation for being fun and add the fact that there's a huge demand right now it seems the Big 4 doesn't have that luxury.
Date: September 7th, 2007 1:47 PM Author: marvelous center
Basically PWC doods were working until 8 to 10 every night during the week, and they had to work some weekends (but not that many). even 7 or 8 was considered an early night. The busy season was supposed to abate, but evidently busy season just kept right on going.
the market for lawyers is hot as hell right now. Big firms nationwide are going to add like 7000 more new associates, more than all the top 25 law schools combined
Date: September 7th, 2007 1:53 PM Author: mind-boggling pozpig national Subject: Market for lawyers hot as hell right now?! Even if that were...
true, how many law schools outside the t25 do we have and how many graduates do all of these schools produce? I sincerely hope a naive law school bound college student doesn't run into this thread.
Yea, dont go to law school if you cant get into a good one. But if you are in a top 5 school or 10 or whatever, it's pretty good right now, especially if you dont have a boner for new york
Date: September 7th, 2007 2:02 PM Author: mind-boggling pozpig national Subject: I agree but graduates of top 5-10 schools are always...
fine regardless of the market. If there are no jobs in law, they have many other options. A fairly average student with an accounting degree can still realistically have a shot at a Big 4 and have great exit options.
lets say you are working with the estate tax. An accoutant will crunch all the numbers, do the balance sheets, etc. A tax lawyer will fight about whether a certain thing should be included in the gross estate or not (and all the nitpicking arguments about if you derived a benefit from the item in question, etc,etc)
Also, as for big 4 accounting firms doing tax shelters, thats because big 4 firms employ tax lawyers. In fact, the 2nd best rated tax law practice in nyc is deloitte (this first best is a v10 biglaw firm). These big 4 speiciality groups dont pay as much a biglaw but they do pay 6 figures. Also from what i hear, its not a rigid pay scale like a biglaw firm, you can negotiate at your interview for more money or fuck up and get less money. Ive also heard they are less grade focused then biglaw.
That 6 figure quote is for an LLM holder. If you go to an accoutning firm as a tax lawyer with just a jd, the range is like 60-80 (from what i have heard). However, they usually do pay for your LLM down the line, so that may be worth something.
most tax lawyers do eventually go back and get an llm (whether they do it to get a job after graudating with no job and a bunch of tax classes or the firm they work for sends them back)
You learn a lot more in llm tax classes then you do in jd classes. A lot of the basic jd tax classes dont go into depth like an llm.
just go to skadden.com and bring up a list of partners in tax. other big firms are similar. people with good JDs dont get the tax llm that often.
it's definitely not a requirement or anything. anyway most of those tax courses you'd take during an llm are taught by adjunct faculty who work at a big firm. if you worked there, they'd just teach you the stuff themselves
the ones like you who have no idea what they're talking about right? Yeah, we would be wayyyyy better of listening to you be like oh my god im a ridiculous nerd, i dont have any idea about taxlaw, lolllz, wgwag, ttt, stfu, etc etc
xo's got a real problem with morons like you ruining threads, you know? You dont know anything about anything on the subject, and you just shoot off your fool mouth.
Go learn what EB means and what big4 speciality groups actually do. Maybe try wiki. Maybe try wiki's sister site, wiki for fucking morons. I dont know. Then come back.
Dude I went to a top tax llm school for my jd and I took a few courses advanced courses in tax back in the day. Almost all the ones that were not "Comparative Tax Policy" or some shit like that were taught by adjuncts. The adjuncts are the top of the field people, not the professors. You become a professor in tax law because you like tax policy and you don't like nitty gritty of practice.
How did you find the tax courses at the school? Not like comparative tax policy, but you know, international, biz org tax. Since im assuming you had the same professors that llm people would.
the problem with bad tax professors is that you just cant learn it from them, you have to go to the hornbooks, did you find with yours class was enough?
I dont practice tax. the classes I took were related to my particular area of corporate that I wanted to go into.
the classes were not bad. adjuncts tend to lecture more I think but other than that there isn't a lot of generalizing that can be done. oh and they are easy graders.
Oh yeah, and while we're on the subejct. The tax court thing
That poster was totally right, non lawyers can represent people in tax court. An accountant need only fill out a form and take a test. Some say this was enacted for the benefit of the big 4's (So their people could go to tax court)
However, though a non jd can represent a party in tax court, its not a good idea. First off, no duty of confidientialy or non disclosure for the accountant, which is a really big deal if you want to quasi illegally shelter your illegal income. Second, most accountants wont do as well a job (not all though, i know a guy who works for the irs, accounting degree, been there for like 20 years. He knows more tax law (by far) then me or my law school friends.
starting big4 salaries are around 95, IF you have an LLM. NO ONE would choose big4 over biglaw. You're a Big4 troll. Sorry you couldn't get a $250k biglaw job.
actually dont have either job yet. Int and M&a tax groups start at 110. Are you right about picking biglaw over big4? maybe, i dunno. And i would probably take biglaw money and run given the chance, sure
But we're not talking about that here, we're talking about big4.
Also, some practices at big4 arent really done at biglaw. Alot of international tax (which really, is the coolest stuff to do) is mainly done in big4 groups. Biglaw does a lot of erisa/employee benefits tax and estate and gift tax work. A lot of tax planning for their wealthy clients who come there for something else first.
So yeah, biglaw pays more, and its probably the best choice (because of that great pay) but if you can take 110k to do something you like and want a career in or 160k to do whaever tax work is thrown to you, then the decision can be harder.
you're the same idiot who has no iea what eb is. You're also an idiot for not knowing ny big4 is doing most of the tax shelter work.
(tax shelters involve countries outside this one, so that makes them international, I wasnt sure if you got that, you know, with being a fucking moron and all)
I've asked a tax atty about this before. The #1 difference (for this guy, at least) is that attorneys have attorney-client privilege, accountants do not. For a wealthy person going through a divorce, an attorney is much more useful than an accountant.