Law Student Tax Challenge Participants Cross Finish Line

Five teams from Lewis & Clark Law School submitted legal memoranda and client letters to the ABA Law Student Tax Challenge in early November.

The ABA Law Student Tax Challenge is a national tax planning and client-counseling competition designed to more closely reflect everyday tax practice than traditional moot court competitions. Participants work in teams of two to produce a memorandum and client correspondence on the tax consequences of a complex business-planning problem. The competition provides students with the opportunity to research “real-life” tax planning issues and to demonstrate their acquired tax knowledge through their writing skills. Lewis & Clark law students receive one hour of academic credit for their work in the written portion of the program.

“The key word here is ‘Challenge,’” said Jack Bogdanski, the Lewis & Clark teams’ coach. “This year’s problem raised several really novel and tough tax issues. Even veteran tax lawyers would be heading off to their laptops to do a fair amount of original research on this one. My hat’s off to the 10 students who teamed up and got the work done. It took perseverance.”

The problem asked students to advise a fictional client on how to a take advantage of special tax credits available for economic development in the New Orleans area. In addition to examining the role of the credits, the problem asked participants to consider how best to allocate the credits among various investors and developers.

In 2006, Lewis and Clark’s first team in the competition won the national prize for the best written submission. More on Lewis & Clark’s co-curricular activities relating to tax law can be found here.