Hey all,

I'm kind of torn right now. I just graduated from a tier 4 outside of Philly and had a tough time in law school. Transfered from another T4 from Cali b/c of a family situation that was finally resolved after graduation and thankfully I passed the PA bar. My grades were fine, but nothing stellar (top third). I also was lucky enough to get a prime document review position in Philly that is paying me very well and will last for several more years, but when my clerkship did not offer me a position, I had to take care of my family and focus on graduating from law school and passing the bar. I had small firm and pro bono clerkships in philly, but not in tax.

I studied mostly corporate law and achieved a specialization cert in corporate law, but my real passion is taxation. I participated in both the ABA tax competition and the Mugel National Tax competition through my moot court position, but don't have a clue how to break into tax firms or the IRS in center city philly. I am also fortunate enough to live about 5 minutes from Villanova law school, and was hoping to get any advice on their tax LLM or if gaining a tax LLM would be worth my time, seeing as how I figure I could easily pay for it on my doc review salary and finish it up in 1.5 years.

It's also quite hard to find any information on admissions stats to any tax LLM program, especially theirs.

Also if anybody has information on Temple's LLM program vs. Villanova's that'd be great.

The new director of the Villanova Tax program is a rising "rock star" in the ABA Tax Section. If I were to pick between the two programs, I'd go there because he's definitely going to increase the visibility of their program.

Plus, it sounds like you want a technical tax degree - I think the Villa program is more focused in that regard. They are kind of like Denver - "all tax, nuthin' but tax" - and they don't fool around with certificates in related disciplines like estate planning that might dilute your tax knowledge.

Neither of these programs are very highly ranked though I guess they may carry some weight within Philadelphia. To be honest I am not exactly sure if an LLM will really help your career prospects. All the big firms are more concerned with where you got your JD and an LLM from a poorly ranked program will do nothing to help you with that. As for going to work for IRS, are you prepared to take the pay cut that will surely come with that job? Given your JD school and an LLM from one of these programs you wont get a chief counsel honors program position so in all likelihood you will get a small time position with IRS without much of a chance of reaching your current salary anytime soon.