CHRISTINA DANIELS: --and I am an attorney at the IRS
Office of Chief Counsel.
Please remember to keep your videos off
and to remain on mute throughout the panel,
unless you are one of the panelists.
Again, my name is Christina Daniels.
And I am an attorney at the IRS Office of Chief Counsel.
I'll be moderating today's panel.
We understand that events like these are normally in person.
But given the current pandemic, we
decided that it would be best to host the event virtually.
However, we soon realized that a silver lining
in hosting a virtual event is that we can now
reach a broader audience.
We reached out to law schools with a diverse population.
And as a result, on today's call,
we have law students, recent grads, and some alum students
from various backgrounds.
Today you'll be hearing from three attorneys from the IRS
Office of Chief Counsel and three attorneys
from the Tax Division of the Department of Justice.
The six panelists will discuss their career trajectories
and what tax law means to them.
Because often when people think of what tax law is,
they think that you have to crunch numbers,
that you have to have an accounting degree,
that you have to be good at math.
And that's not necessarily the case.
For example, let's say that there's an Uber driver who
receives a tip in cash.
And he doesn't report it because it's cash and how will
they ever catch him if it's cash?
But that's something that tax law covers.
Another instance is if there is a US
person who has an offshore account in, let's say,
the Cayman Islands.
Well, tax law also covers whether that person
has to report or not.
Then another instance is if a US person goes abroad,
let's say, for a couple of months.
And they have a job overseas.
Well, tax law also covers that.
Tax law covers all of the scenarios
that I just mentioned.
But you don't necessarily have to be good at math
to analyze the issues.
In tax law [AUDIO OUT] there's appellate tax law.
And there's also corporate tax law--
for instance, the Apples and the Googles of the world.
Then there's also instances to opportunities
in transaction law.
For instance, I work in the National Office
of Chief Counsel.
And here, we work on providing guidance to taxpayers.
And there's even non-tax experience.
For example, everybody needs an in-house counsel.
And there's employment law.
And the panelists will get more into that later.
Along with these amazing opportunities,
working for the federal government
is rewarding in many ways.
You get to get hands-on experience much faster than you
would get at a law firm.
And you get to develop expertise in areas of tax law.
There's also federal benefits.
And there's, most importantly, a good work/life balance.
As I mentioned, we are hiring.
And before I pass it over to the panelists,
I would like to let you all be aware of a couple of links.
First, as I mentioned, we're hiring.
And the links to our Honors Program
and to other of our hiring pages are in the chat box.
In addition, the links to our careers
pages so you can learn more about the different positions.
And our chief counsel's LinkedIn page is also in the chat box.
And finally, the link for the chief counsel's ambassador's
page is in the chat box.
Well, what is an ambassador's list?
Well, over 200 of our attorneys who went to various schools
have made themselves available for law students
to reach out to on a more personal level.
If a student has a question about a certain decision
or if they just want to talk to somebody
from their school who works at Chief Counsel,
that's what the list is there for.
Even if your school isn't on the list,
you can reach out to somebody from your state.
Remember, if you have any questions, please send them
to Anthony Kim in the chat box or email them to Dara Oliphant.
And now we will hear from Mark McDonald
from the Department of Justice.
MARK MCDONALD: Hello.
My name's Mark McDonald.
I'm a trial attorney with DOJ Tax Division, Department
of Justice Tax Division.
The tax division has a civil and a criminal component.
There's a civil side that litigates tax matters civilly,
like injunctions and disputing collection amounts.
And then there's an appellate section
that works on appeals from those decisions
at the lower court level.
And there's also a criminal side at DOJ tax division.
The criminal side supervises all criminal tax prosecutions
in the US and also handles prosecution
of some tax matters in the US.
And the criminal side also has an appellate section.
With regards to myself, I took some tax classes
in law school--
just basic tax, corporate tax, and some corporate business
law classes.
That's the extent of my tax background.
I'm an English major.
I'm not a CPA.
And really my interest was in white-collar crime.
I worked at a firm dealing with white-collar crime
for a few years, defense work, and then three years
at a county prosecutor's office.
And I've been with DOJ Tax Division in their Northern
Criminal Enforcement Section for about 10 years now.
So if you have an interest in working,
doing white-collar crime--
not necessarily tax, but tax is helpful.
And it provides a background for your prosecutions,
DOJ Tax Division's criminal side is a great thing to look at.
With respect to the criminal side,
I mentioned that we're responsible for supervising
nationwide tax prosecutions.
Part of our duties and responsibilities
are writing memos.
Every US attorney's office, when they
decide they want to charge something that's a tax crime,
they have to submit it to the Tax Division
along with their evidence and their agents'
write-ups on whatever interviews they've conducted.
We write a memo analyzing the potential prosecution,
looking for strengths and weaknesses,
suggesting other grand jury work that might be performed.
And then we send our analysis back
to them approving it or not approving it and actually
asking for additional work.
And then again, as I mentioned, in some cases
we are asked to prosecute cases in different jurisdictions.
In some cases we develop our own cases
and prosecute those cases.
And in terms of your own litigation,
if you were to come to Tax Division, for your cases
you would get to do the grand jury work.
You'd put witnesses in.
You'd subpoena documents.
You'd subpoena bank records.
You handle any sort of pretrial or pre-indictment plea
negotiations or pre-indictment motions.
Then you indict the case.
You handle the motions practice.
You're there at the arraignments and all the pretrial motions.
And you put the case on.
And you have the jury trial.
You pick the jury and put on the jury trial.
So I think Tax Division on the criminal side
is a great place to work.
I like it a lot, because I like white-collar crime prosecution.
And I hope when you graduate from law school,
you apply and come here.
Thank you.
CHRISTINA DANIELS: Thank you, Mark.
Next we'll hear Lewis Booth about his time
at Chief Counsel.
LEWIS BOOTH: Hello.
My name is Lewis Booth.
I am a Special Trial Attorney with the Office
of Chief Counsel in the Small Business Self-Employed
Division.
And my office is in Houston, Texas.
As a brief overview, the functions
of the Office of Chief Counsel for the Internal Revenue
Service can generally be separated into two categories.
You have the national office functions,
which issue forward-facing guidance,
private letter rulings, technical advice memoranda,
chief counsel advice--
and something that you, if you're interested in tax,
will deal with almost on a daily basis, which are
the regulations to the code.
And then in the field offices, we
are the primary litigating function for the Internal
Revenue Service.
But we also serve an in-house counsel role
to the IRS field offices that are around the country.
There is a lot of diversity in the work in the field,
and in the national office.
That's just a very brief overview.
My path to the Office of Chief Counsel--
I was an accountant.
And I went to law school at the Southern University Law Center.
And my 2L year in law school, I clerked at some firms.
I really enjoyed the work.
It was very difficult work.
But I enjoyed the challenge.
But I was looking for something a little different.
And so my entire 3L year in law school,
I clerked at the New Orleans Office of Chief Counsel
in the Small Business Self-Employed Division.
I fell in love with the work.
I applied.
I received an offer.
The offer was in the Houston office.
I had actually only been to Houston once.
I accepted the offer straightaway.
And it was the best career decision I've made.
As a brief overview with respect to-- you've
heard before about litigating and you get interesting work.
I started in the office in September of 2010.
I had my first trial in October of 2010.
You get your own caseload.
You work very hard.
It's very rewarding.
One of the best things about the job
is every day is going to be a little bit different.
You're going to have questions from revenue officers
and revenue agents.
Your manager is going to put you on several assignments.
And it's just an exciting place to work.
As a special trial attorney, my primary responsibilities
are to litigate the largest and most significant cases that
exist within the Small Business Self-Employed division.
So these transactions include things
like syndicated conservation easements,
microcaptive insurance arrangements, large estate tax
cases, large partnership cases, and the like.
In addition, we also, as the in-house counsel
for some of the field offices, we
receive cases and referrals from the revenue officers
and revenue agents.
And then we refer them to the Department of Justice,
who is our litigating arm in the US District Courts.
So one of the other panelists is Moha Yepuri.
I have worked with Moha for 10 years,
referring her cases for her department
to then litigate on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service
in the United States District Courts.
Also, as Mark mentioned, there are
cross-assignment opportunities within the Office
of Chief Counsel.
So for example, even though I'm in the Small Business
Self-Employed Division, when I came to the office
I worked on cases that were a part of the Large Business
and International Division.
I worked on some criminal tax cases.
I had some exposure to some of the National Office work.
So never feel like if you come to the Office of Chief Counsel
that when you get somewhere, that's just where you are.
There's a lot of diversity in the work.
Additionally one of the best benefits
that I can think of, with respect
to working for the Office of Chief Counsel specifically,
but the federal government generally,
is the work/life balance.
You are expected to work very hard when you're at work.
Sometimes you're at work a little longer than you want.
But when you go home it's over.
You have your own life.
You do your own thing.
Management is very, very accommodating
to certain things that may happen in your life.
For example, there is an attorney in my office
who recently was promoted to a special trial attorney
position.
And she has taken maternity leave on several occasions
when she had children.
It never negatively impacted her career in any way.
Another one of the managers in my office
proudly will tell anyone that he took six months of paternity
leave when his children were born.
This was before he became a manager.
He is now a manager.
It did not negatively impact his career in any way.
And one of the greatest things about the Office of Chief
Counsel is if you like litigating, come
to the Office of Chief Counsel.
That's what we do for the most part in the field.
In my opinion, litigating is the best part about the job.
But the caveat to that is we are looking for the right answer.
Now, I like to win as much as the next person,
maybe a little more.
But what is most important is when I come to my manager
and I tell her these are the facts,
this is what the law says, I think this is the answer--
there is never any inducement for me
to win as opposed to just find the right answer to interpret
the tax laws appropriately.
So I am a big supporter of the Office of Chief Counsel.
I love working here.
I work here by choice every day.
And I love it every day.
Every day is a little different.
And I really encourage you to come join us.
CHRISTINA DANIELS: Thank you so much Lewis.
Again, if you have questions, you
can put them in the chat box to Anthony Kim,
or email them to Dara Oliphant.
Next we will hear from Moha Yepuri about her time
at the Department of Justice Tax Division.
MOHA YEPURI: Hi.
Thank you, Christina.
My name is Moha Yepuri.
And you heard a little bit earlier today
from one of my colleagues, Mark McDonald.
He's a criminal attorney with the Tax Division.
And I work on the civil side.
We have about 10 sections, 10 civil sections.
And what I do is I litigate complex tax cases
in Federal District Court and Federal Bankruptcy Court.
As he mentioned, we have civil attorneys.
We have criminal attorneys.
We have appellate attorneys.
In a little bit you'll hear from one
of my colleagues, Sherra Wong.
She's one of our appellate attorneys.
So what I'd like to do today is talk to you
about what I do overall, and then tell you why I love it.
So as I mentioned, I go to Federal District Court
and Bankruptcy Court.
I do collection work.
I work on complex refund litigation as well.
The cases I take--
it's a full-time litigation section.
So at any given time, I have 30 to 40 cases on my docket.
And I take cases that are referred to me
from Chief Counsel's Office.
As you heard Lewis mention, Lewis Booth and I
have worked together from Chief Counsel's Office
for about the last 10 years.
I've taken his referrals.
I'm taking his cases that he refers to our office to court.
We also take referrals from the US Attorney's Office.
We are the tax specialists.
So if there is particular refund litigation that comes through,
we take those cases from the US Attorney's Offices.
Now, I came to the Justice Department.
I went to law school.
My background is that I'm a CPA.
And I have my undergraduate master's degree in accounting.
About half of my office has a background in accounting,
half do not.
So the Tax Division is primarily looking
for really strong litigators.
If you want to develop those skills,
if you want to learn how to critically look at a case,
develop your cases, take your own depositions,
write your own motions, you should seriously
consider the Tax Division.
Because that's what I do on a day to day basis.
I'm looking at my docket of 30 to 40 cases.
I'm considering what motions need
to be filed in looking at my schedule.
I'm determining which deponents need
to be deposed in those cases.
And I'm preparing my cases for trial.
So if you like trial work and that sounds interesting to you,
you should really consider the Tax Division.
And as I mentioned, some of us do have accounting backgrounds,
but it's not--
about 50% of us do.
Now, why I love it.
Why I love the Tax Division and why
I love working as a civil trial attorney for the Tax Division
is the autonomy.
I have worked for a firm before.
And I have prepared my partner for depositions.
And I have done memos for other people who are working cases.
But with the Tax Division, what I have found
is that I have a lot of autonomy with respect to my cases.
I certainly have support, if I'm not
sure about which direction to take the case in.
We have a lot of litigators who are more experienced than I.
I've been with the Tax Division about 15 years now.
But there is a lot of support available.
And that's great for a young attorney.
But the autonomy is fantastic.
Nobody's taking my depositions for me.
Nobody's writing any piece of my motions for me.
They're all being reviewed.
But that is one thing I love about working for Tax Division.
The other thing that I mentioned, it's trial work.
So if you want to develop strong litigation skills,
I don't think you could find anything better
in the market in terms of developing those skills.
Because while the firm's train you, it takes a lot more time.
When I started, I was given 12 cases that were my own.
And now these days I have anywhere between 30 and 40.
So if you want to develop and hone your litigation skills,
and have a great environment in which to do that,
I think you should really consider the Tax Division.
Thanks.
CHRISTINA DANIELS: Thank you, Moha.
Next we'll hear from Marie Milnes-Vasquez about her time
at Chief Counsel in the National Office.
MARIE MILNES-VASQUEZ: Hi, everyone.
I sit in the Office of Chief Counsel for Corporate Tax.
That office is exclusively in Washington, DC.
And what we do is take very deep dives
into specific corporate tax issues.
We basically are the Geek Squad.
We bore way down.
We have three specific things that we do in our office.
The first is to give feedback and advice on corporate issues
to all of these other folks who are speaking.
The second thing that we do is we
take a look at specific deals that
are happening in real time.
So a taxpayer who is planning a deal,
has the option of bringing that deal in.
And we will analyze that to see if the rules apply
to their deal in the way that they assume.
The third thing is the area that is near and dear to me.
And this is where I spend almost all of my average day.
And that is working on rules.
I supervise, as a special counsel in our office,
the issuance of all new rules in the corporate tax area.
Which I think is just really cool, because when else
do you get to impose your rules on anybody else?
That's what we do.
I've been here 20 years.
And I have climbed up through the agency during that time.
Where do I come from?
I'm originally from LA.
And I was an intern in the Office of Chief Counsel
a long time ago.
I had a great experience.
And that experience is really what
turned me on to the enjoyment of deep corporate tax
technical work.
When did I come on a full-time basis
to the Office of Chief Counsel?
Well, I was out of school for about five years.
At that point, I was at an extremely large
international firm.
And I was structuring deals in that firm.
At the same time, I was thinking about starting a family.
And honestly when I came to the Office of Chief Counsel,
I was expecting.
And what I wanted at that point was
to be able to have really cool issues at the same time
as having kids.
And the Office of Chief Counsel totally came through.
I was just blown away about the quality of the work
that I was handed.
I have raised two children, one is
18 and one is 22, during the time I have been in the office.
And I actually have stepped up through the organization
during those years.
So I came into the office and I've
been using the same skills that I learned on the outside
to analyze deals while I work on the inside.
With the situation in the world right now
and everybody doing their job in our office from home,
I supervise a huge number of younger attorneys
who have small children.
And our office is expecting three extra kids
in the next six months or so.
And we're very excited about that.
In our in our office, you just get the work
done when you get the work done, as long as you
satisfy our goals.
If you want to do your work at 3:00 AM, you go for it.
And I have just been blown away by the excellent quality
of the guidance that our office has
been able to issue under those circumstances.
So what else is great about working
in the Office of Chief Counsel, other than flexibility
and all of that?
As I said earlier, we get to work on great issues.
They aren't your everyday issues.
If they were easy issues, we would not see them.
We get to figure out what the actual right
answer is under the law that currently exists.
And we get to figure out what the rules should be, and then
implement a rule that actually effectuates that.
This is obviously a very knowledge-based job.
If you have an inner-geek in you that is just
dying to drill down into things, this
could be the thing that is great for you.
A little bit of background on where I came from
and how I got here.
In undergrad, I studied English.
I was a junior high school English teacher for three years
after that.
And then I studied law.
I really stumbled into corporate tax work.
I had a basic federal income tax class and everything clicked.
And I just kept going from there.
Would you be happy doing this?
One question for you.
When you sat for your LSAT, did you
enjoy the analytical section of the exam?
That is, "Anna and Jose are going
to see a film with a group of friends,
and they have to sit with each other.
But Anna hates somebody else."
And if you enjoyed figuring out the answers,
you probably have a very analytical brain.
And I encourage you to think about doing the kind of stuff
that I'm doing.
Thank you.
CHRISTINA DANIELS: Thank you so much, Marie.
Next we'll be hearing from Sherra Wong about her time
at the Department of Justice in their Tax Division.
SHERRA WONG: Hi.
My name is Sherra Wong.
I am an attorney at the Civil Appellate
Section of the Tax Division at the Department of Justice.
We also have a criminal section that handles criminal appeals.
We litigate, in the Federal Appellate Courts,
appeals that come up from the Federal District Courts
and from the Tax Court.
We spend the bulk of our time writing briefs.
And for some of those cases, we present an oral argument
to a panel.
We also write memos at times when
we consider whether to settle a case that is on appeal,
or when we give advice to the Solicitor General
as to whether the government should appeal a ruling that it
lost below, or when a case goes up to the Supreme Court.
This is my fifth year in Appellate.
Before that, I spent five years as a trial attorney
in the Tax Division doing the work
that Moha's doing right now.
And I was hired through the Honors Program
into the trial section.
I was an English major.
And it was in my 2L year that I took a tax class,
almost on a whim.
And it just clicked with me.
And that took me to where I am today.
In Appellate we have people from all kinds
of different academic backgrounds.
We have English certainly, social sciences.
We have music majors.
We have, I think, one of our managers was a physics major.
So don't let your academic background limit you
as to what you can do with the IRS or the Tax Division.
The thing I love most about working in Appellate
is that you get long, uninterrupted blocks of time
to really engage deeply with ideas.
We have very few meetings.
I can go a week without anyone calling me on the phone, which
is my idea of heaven.
And when I say ideas, I don't mean just substantive tax
issues.
I would say that close to half of my cases
actually turn jurisdictional or procedural issues.
And that means what you say in the brief
and what a court might adopt in its opinion
can have implications beyond the tax realm.
And also, because this appellate practice,
those ideas and those opinions can also
affect what's going on in the Federal District courts
within the circuits, in the Tax Court,
and may also affect the thinking of other circuits, which
can be pretty cool.
The other thing I want to emphasize,
which Moha and Lewis also talked about,
is we have so much autonomy in our work.
In Appellate, all you need to do is really
to hand in a good product on time, by the deadline.
And in the meantime, no one is telling you what to do,
how to do your job.
No one's checking on you.
You can pace yourself however you like.
It's also your case.
You drive the train.
You write the brief.
And in the vast majority of cases,
you get to argue your case.
And this also applies to my experience in the trial section
in that it's--
I never felt like I was a cog in a big machine,
even though the Department of Justice
might feel to you like those big institutions.
And it is.
There's a lot of us.
But I always felt like it was a very human place.
And my accomplishments, I felt like,
were mine with a lot of help from my friends in the division
and at the IRS.
I still remember how weird it felt to drive my government
rental car to my first deposition eight months out
of law school, and thinking-- you're
trusting me with this, right?
Yeah, they are.
And it just felt really amazing.
And sometimes I hear from lateral hires
about how the reason that they want
to be with the Tax Division is you get into court right away.
And sometimes it does feel like you're
drinking from a firehose.
But that's really great training.
You learn by doing.
And again, you have a lot of support, like Moha was saying.
And you really feel like they're trusting you with this.
And when you actually accomplish what they send you out to do,
it's incredibly affirming personally and professionally.
And so the nature of our work in the Appellate Section,
it lends itself very well to flexible work arrangements.
Lots of our attorneys work at least one day
from home, even before the pandemic.
Some of us do work part-time, because of family obligations.
And just like what Lewis was describing in his office, when
people come back from even years of part-time,
they still get promoted.
They still get the big cases.
I haven't seen that kind of work arrangements
impact a negative way on the work.
So I think it's very challenging and interesting work every day.
You make a very decent living.
And you also have a life outside the office.
So it's a great place to work.
And I hope you do consider joining us.
CHRISTINA DANIELS: Thank you so much, Sherra.
And lastly we'll hear from Bridgette Gibson about her time
at Office of Chief Counsel.
Bridgette, I think you may still be on mute.
BRIDGETTE GIBSON: Thank you, Christina.
Good afternoon.
My name is Bridgete Gibson.
And I am the Area Counsel for General Legal Services
in Dallas, Texas.
I have been with the Office of Chief Counsel for 32 years.
And so obviously, it's not a very stressful job,
because I don't look like I've worked anywhere for 32 years.
At least, that's what you should be telling yourself right now.
But a little bit about my journey
with the Office of Chief Counsel.
I started in Sacramento, California
as a docket attorney.
And I handled tax cases.
I did that for five years.
I practiced before the Tax Court.
I also practiced before the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California as a bankruptcy--
it was called a Special Assistant US Attorney.
And so you were able to do the dual job of working
for chief counsel, but also had a special hat
that we wore working for the Department of Justice.
So after about five years, I then learned
about an opportunity within IRS Chief Counsel, which
would allow me to switch my area of focus,
but also still remain within Chief Counsel.
And so from Sacramento, I took that very long drive
to San Francisco.
If you know the area, you know it's not that long of a drive.
But I took the drive to San Francisco
where I started doing labor and employment tax--
hold it-- labor and employment law with the IRS Chief Counsel.
No more tax work.
And so for general legal services,
for those of you that may think, "well, I'm
interested in the government.
I'm not interested in tax"--
I will tell you that for the IRS Office of Chief Counsel,
we have a labor and employment arm.
And basically every federal agency
would have this type of work simply because everybody
has employees.
IRS is a business.
And what we do is we represent the agency in labor
and employment matters before the Merit Systems Protection
Board, before the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, and also before arbitrators.
And so there is an aspect and part of the IRS employees
are covered by a collective bargaining agreement.
And so that's the IRS employees as well as chief counsel.
Our job in General Legal Services
is to represent the agency.
And so we're on the other side.
We're opposition to the employees.
Our opposing parties can be anyone from private practice
attorneys, might actually be union
attorneys, a union steward.
And sometimes the employee will represent his
or herself in the proceeding.
And so it's really interesting work.
You get anything from--
"I should not have been suspended
for not paying my taxes."
Which of course that would be something
you would think an IRS employee should be disciplined for and.
The other issue may simply be something as simple
as "I think that I really should have received a higher
performance appraisal."
So we're arguing about performance appraisals.
In terms of my journey and in law school--
I started as an Honors hire 32 years ago.
It's the only place I've ever worked, always as an attorney;
passed the bar.
And I passed the Louisiana Bar.
So for those of you that may be from Louisiana, thinking,
"well, if I take the Louisiana Bar,
I'm never going to get out of Louisiana."
Here I am.
I started in California.
I'm now in Texas.
And I'm actually originally from North Carolina.
So if you've been charting the geography of what I've
been saying, you will hear--
she took the Louisiana Bar, passed
that; worked in Sacramento; worked in San Francisco;
now she's in Dallas.
And that is one of the best benefits
of working as an attorney for the federal government.
And that is you take one bar exam.
And I would say, working for the federal government
and practicing the type of law that we're
talking about today--
federal law, tax law is uniform.
You're not going to change with the federal--
the IRS is going to practice and have the same rules in Texas
that they have in North Carolina.
And the same is true for federal labor and employment law.
It doesn't change.
And so to the extent that we have--
in GLS, we have six field offices
that handle labor and employment law in the major cities.
On the tax side, they have, I know, more than 50 offices
around the country that represent
IRS counsel in tax matters.
And so you have opportunities to live in different places
and possibly transfer to different places,
without ever having to take another bar exam.
Which that sold me.
They had me at that point from day one.
But just a little bit more about GLS and what
we do on a national scale--
we have two functions that are in our headquarters
office in Washington, DC.
And one branch is called the Ethics and General
Government branch.
They handle appropriations and ethics issues.
And it's a centralized function.
And so they're only in Washington.
The other function within GLS is the PCTL, the Public Claims
Technology Law branch.
And they handle things dealing with procurement matters.
And they also do bid protests, contract law.
IRS is a business.
So if we have issues with our contracts,
they are the attorneys that represent the IRS
in those types of issues.
So that's pretty much an overview
of how we operate within General Legal Services.
I think that if you've paid attention
to everything that's been said, you
will hear that it's really--
there are so many options, so many options for employment.
It is hard work.
It is meaningful work.
It's not stressful work--
32 years.
But if you start in my office, day one
you get assigned to a mentor.
And then usually I will assign a case to the employee as well.
And it would be an active case.
But you would actually work the case as a second chair.
So you're going to hit the ground running with litigation.
But if you know litigation, you also
know a large part of litigation is also
the ability to write motions and to draft motions very well.
And so while litigation sounds so glamorous,
we are not in court that much.
If my attorneys hopefully were doing it the right way,
a lot of things get dismissed because of our motion-writing.
So we're very proud of that.
But I just hope that you have learned something today
that you did not know about working for the government.
And we welcome the opportunity to get to meet you
on a personal level.
Take care.
Have a COVID-free rest of your school year.
Thank you.
CHRISTINA DANIELS: Thank you, Bridgette.
And I want to thank all the panelists
for taking their time out to speak
about their respective careers.
And as we mentioned, working for the federal government
is a rewarding career path.
And we are hiring.
And even if the career paths that were mentioned today,
none of them spoke to you, we would
like for you to at least just give tax law a try.
Try taking a tax course.
Because you never know what you would like unless you try it.
And if you realize that you enjoy tax law if you take
the class, then the course will make
you more competitive for a career in tax law.
And at the very minimum, the course
would help you develop some analytical skills.
It's a win-win situation.
And next, I'll turn it over to Anthony Kim for questions.