Second thoughts about this big 4 thing. Tax reform broke one of the biggest computer systems they use to fill forms and its becoming increasingly obvious they actually have to fill the forms essentially by hand.

Pulling everyone they could get their hands on... and I got suckered in. I was supposed to give like 20% of my time but the commitment metastasized to like basically all of my time and actual tax consulting work is basically over time.

I have seen enough 8858’s to last me a life time.

Yikes, that’s no bueno. Hope it gets better.

Got better. Client is doing some internal restructuring so a giant pile of work just came in. I have like 12 hours of compliance to do over the weekend then I should be in a position to turn down additional compliance work except the bare minimum.

Being an attorney is awesome. Days like today where I drive 90 minutes round trip for a court appearance that is administratively adjourned by the court without notice to the parties particularly gives my life the meaning that I have been missing.

Were the hours billable?

Kinda. We do not bill by the hour unless mandated by statute or rule. Every fee agreement we have is alternative.

This client pays a monthly flat fee for all their work.

Not sure I would bill client for what happened today, wouldn't seem fair.

Well, it took two years, but I was invited to join the practice group I wanted all along. Feels good!

Congrats. What group?

Congrats Sam.

Thanks guys. It’s the corporate entertainment group (it has a fancy name, but it’s firm-specific... feel free to PM me if you’re curious).

Thankful I was able to take the February bar instead of yesterday's.

Hearing there was a civ essay on class actions and CAFA and a family law/con law mix on the constitutionality of a statute mandating vaccines for children for non religious reasons.

It's great to come back to this thread for the first time in nearly a decade and see that it's still going strong.

Question: Anybody here have any experience teaching as an adjunct? I'm looking into it and, once you get past the ****ty pay, I am really excited at the prospect of doing so.

Background: I graduated law school in 2012, passed two bar exams (state where I graduated and my home state), struggled like hell to find work, ended up starting my own practice from my parents spare bedroom just to see where it went, 5+ years go by and I'm still going strong by the grace of god things have worked out. In addition to my solo practice, I'm now of counsel for a local PI firm that wants to take on criminal defense clients (this now roughly 95% of my case load).

Given that I make my own hours and enjoy trial work, it feels like a good fit.

Thoughts?

In jury duty today, this is either my third or fourth time in ten years. Time before last almost got picked. Yay Baltimore City.

What would you teach?

Probably a great way to make some connections and pick up some business. Maybe even some health insurance.

By the way, are you in a state that legalized weed? I’ve been wondering what it’s like for criminal defense attorneys. I’d heard it’s going to/has eliminated a lot of low level easy work that paid bills.

We have a steady trickle of home hash labs, probation marijuana violations, and DUI-D defense cases, but not enough to carry a FTE, in our Colorado MJ biz firm.

I won’t lie. Compliance is growing on me. There is very little demand for face time since there isn’t a lot of technical stuff that needs detailed explanations. Seniors and managers are basically MIA/WFH on Fridays. I even got some assignments for remote offices that gave me even more excuses to WFH. I clocked 115 hours last two weeks still but I stayed home 3 out of ten workdays and I could have gotten away with probably another 2 or 3 days of WFH.

Compliance isn’t all form filing either like I thought. A lot of emails back and forth with actual code/reg citations debating how to file and what the form instructions are trying to get at.. You can easily tell some of the managers are quite lost with tax reform and lean very heavily on just a couple lawyers who can actually navigate the code to push back and tell them the right way to file the forms. I am pretty convinced even most of the JD/LLMs don’t know what’s going on and/or don’t care.

Glad to hear it man! Sounds like you made the right choice in the end, which is so hard to do given the limited information facing recent grads when the time to make it arrives.

Government contracting probably isn't too much different from this. Except regulations more proscribed. I only call someone when I don’t think a couple emails back and forth haven’t /won’t resolved the issue.

Got about 30 hours of work written off as useless (keeping billable hours) because doing things right would take literally hundreds of man hours and nobody actually cares because taxpayer is literally paying more than they are supposed to pay and doesn’t give a **** and just don’t want to deal with tax filings. So they are just going to keep the wrong, but consistent with other wrong filings, filings.

Never been so happy to get so much of my work basically dumped into the recycling bin.

Leading-edge, new reg tax work has always had a substantial, sort of, "fake it 'til you make it" element to it. I had classmates who worked for the IRS. I would call them up, and they would tell me that no one had any idea how a particular new law/reg was going to be enforced or what form to use. So, you look at how similar situations were handled in the past, analogously apply that to the new reg/law, and if it doesn't work out, it's most likely just more billable hours.

When I first got started, one of the big accounting firms hired me to defend one of their clients in district court, and the whole thing was a screw up by the accountants, but the client paid for everything and was happy as could be when I got a better settlement than they expected. The JD/LLM's at the accounting firm, who couldn't try their way out of a paper bag, were happy to run the clock.

Litigators man. Obviously you just punch your way through a paper bag, there’s no need to go to trial for that ****.

Can you try your way out of paper straws?

My first depositions ever were of 3 golf course employees back to back to back. It was an accident involving a sharp wire on a city owned golf course which sliced open our guys leg (50 staples) and they had filed a plea to the jurisdiction saying that recreational activities are subject to immunity.

I was a third year law student and was supposed to be practicing under a "supervising attorney". My boss just told me to go not to worry about it, and the defense attorney knew I was a 3rd year law student and didn't seem to mind. I was nervous as hell and completely overprepared. I remember the other lawyer brought an entire footlong Subway sandwich in and I guess thought I was going to suck, because he about jumped out of his seat objecting with lettuce flying everywhere when he didn't like the way things were going.

A few weeks later I got a letter from the other attorney threatening to report me to the bar for unauthorized practice of law unless I donated $50 to the boys and girls club or something. My boss instead made me write a check to a local little league which we supported and he reimbursed me.

Anyone in Vegas this weekend by any chance?

This is hilarious for multiple reasons.

Are depos usually brown bag bring your own lunch lol?