# What do you think a tax lawyer does?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-a-tax-lawyer-does/174710>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [May 12, 2003, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-a-tax-lawyer-does/174710 "2003-05-12T15:35:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2003, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-a-tax-lawyer-does/174710/21 "2003-05-14T13:30:30Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by TaxGuy \*  
> **Cool, are you also one of the few and the proud?**

Nah, but I’m a law clerk in federal court so I see a lot of tax stuff. Actually, it’s a bit of a stretch to say I know _exactly_ what a tax lawyer does, since if I see it it’s being litigated, and you said you’re transactional, so I’m sure there’s a lot more of it that I don’t see so much.

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**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2003, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-a-tax-lawyer-does/174710/22 "2003-05-14T15:56:36Z")

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> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by TaxGuy \*  
> **It’s the _corporate_ lawyers that do boring paperwork all day. I’m actually talking to people, reading the law, formulating arguments, supporting and attacking those arguments to make them stronger, and such stuff all day long. The corporate guys are looking for typos in documents and pulling out the documents for last deal they did to change the name of the client, dates and dollar amounts.**

Oooh, talking trash, are we?

I personally don’t let my tax guys actually talk to the clients. I like my clients to remain conscious during negotiations. If a tax issue does come up, I do what I want. Later, I will summon a tax minion, who will spend way too much time looking things up, to justify what we’ve done. (Tax minions can be kinda cute, in a geeky, nearsighted way, so grateful to stick their little pointy noses into the daylight, so eager to show you their obscure citations. Not that you’d want them to breed or anything–as if that would ever be an issue!) Anyway, tax lawyers may spend their days “supporting and attacking” arguments about RPPI and other _really_ exciting topics but, ultimately, they are just transaction costs.

🙂

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**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2003, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-a-tax-lawyer-does/174710/23 "2003-05-14T15:56:36Z")

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I used to work in Corporate Tax. Legal Assistant/Secretarial type stuff. I know exactly what you do - or I know what you would have been doing 15 years ago when I would have been typing your memos.

(OK, you don’t do corporate, so you probably do a lot less M&A and JV stuff than the guys I worked for. But some of them have gone private since - and do transactional and/or estate planning stuff).

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