<p>I have some questions regarding legal jobs with the IRS that I hope some lawyers here may be able to answer.</p>
<p>1) I heard somewhere that working for the IRS is one of the best ways to start one's career in tax law. Why is this true? How does it compare to tax law in private practice?</p>
<p>2) How transferable are the skills that an IRS tax attorney have? Would it be difficult to "lateral" over to private practice/in-house after several years? </p>
<p>3) How competitive are legal jobs with the IRS? Does it require T14? High class rank? Networking? </p>
<p>4) How much does law school location matter? If one graduates from a T20 in the midwest, how difficult would it be to work in NYC or LA as a IRS tax attorney?</p>
<p>I have some interest in tax law, so I’ve asked some of these questions before. Don’t take this as definitive, but this is my take from what I’ve heard so far.</p>
<p>1) Both my tax prof and a family friend who is a tax partner at a firm in Boston have said that the IRS is not a great place to start a tax law career. The reasons seem to bounce around a bit, but they’re basically all along the lines of “You don’t see a lot of innovative tax law as an IRS attorney. It’s largely a practice based on mistakes or less-than-clever tax avoidance strategies that a party thinks is more unique that it really is.” Accordingly, there’s a lot of practice by rote. A good private practice will require much more creativity and that can be beaten out of you by the IRS (unless you get lucky, of course).</p>
<p>2) The skills transfer well, but are limited in scope. It wouldn’t be any harder than normal to start up a specialized tax practice, but in-house counsel spots typically require a broader base of knowledge (except at very large companies with enough lawyers in-house to have some specialize). An in-house position might require experience in fields as diverse as contracting, acquisitions, labor law, environmental law … generally a much broader practice than you’re likely to be exposed to at the IRS.</p>
<p>3) From what I’ve seen, positions in major metropolitan areas are quite a bit more selective, but no location “requires” T14 or even T1. The IRS hires a lot of attorneys and their hiring profile is pretty diverse. All of the standard factors apply to making it easier to get a job (higher school rank, higher class rank, review participation), but there’s a much wider hiring range than biglaw or DOJ positions.</p>
<p>(1) Yes, the IRS is a good place to start your tax law career. It gives you insight into the process of how the IRS makes decisions. A better place to start, however, would be working for the US Tax Court as a law clerk.</p>
<p>(2) Depends. By analogy, criminal prosecutors usually have no problem transitioning to criminal defense. With tax, it depends on what you were doing with IRS and where you go.</p>
<p>(3) Very competitive, but not at Big NY Law Firm level.</p>
<p>(4) Top lawyer students from anywhere in the country write their own tickets. A lot of George Washington, Georgetown students seems to have an easier time working for the Federal government, however.</p>
<p>(2) Actually, the rumors I’ve heard say that public defenders’ offices are very ideological and won’t want students who have done even summer internships with prosecutors, much less full-time jobs. I can’t confirm this myself, but it’s very common believed at my (T14) school.</p>
<p>(2) I was thinking about prosecutor to private criminal defense. I had not heard that about public defenders. Usually public defenders are so overwhelmed with cases they will take whatever help they can get from anybody.</p>
<p>Man, my grammar has gotten bad. Commonly believed. Thanks for the thought; that’s how I would have thought, too, but sometimes people surprise me.</p>