I have BA in Law from one of Eastern European law schools and ten years of legal experience mostly in fields of Tax and Financial Law there (five years in Attorney General’s Office as an investigator for tax and financial crimes plus five years as an tax legal counsel performing tax-efficient planning and developing tax-reducing legal schemes for domestic and international business projects).
Now I’m a permanent resident of the USA and want to continue my legal education here to be eligible for working for biglaw or big4 in the field of tax-efficient planning and reducing taxes ( it doesn’t mean that if I get any good offer from non-biglaw or non-big4, I won’t accept it; of course, I will). There are just two ways to do this: three-year JD program or one-year LLM in Tax.
LLM in Tax seems to be very attractive (I’ll spend much less time, much less money and be taught exactly what I need to practice Tax Law here) and I’m inclined to make this choice.
So I will very appreciate your advice on the following questions:
1. Do you agree with my choice? Will LLM in Tax be enough to take a position in biglaw or big4 (or any good position somewhere else) and practice my favorite occupation?
2. Do you know any foreign trained lawyers with just LLM in Tax? Are they satisfied with having just LLM in Tax or, if they had a choice now, they would have preferred JD instead of LLM in Tax? Are they satisfied with the tasks they’re assigned or they see that lawyers with JD are assigned to perform more interesting and challengeable tasks? Are lawyers with just LLM in Tax treated by partners in the same way as those with JD?
3. What is the difference in salaries, bonuses and benefits between lawyers with JD and lawyers with just LLM in Tax in biglaw? What is this difference in big4?
Any other comments are very welcomed.