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.
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.
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).