TaxProf Blog

It's actually a little more complicated because there's also the bar exam as a gatekeeper. It doesn't test the same things, but you definitely do need to have a pretty good grasp of logic to do well.

The upshot is that the de-emphasis of the LSAT on the admissions side may result in (1) some additional new lawyers who are not as analytically capable, (2) some additional new lawyers who are just as capable, but are bad test-takers, and (3) some additional new law students who are unable to pass the bar.

Without knowing the proportion of these three groups, it's hard to say if the net effect will be positive or negative. But I would venture to guess that if schools dramatically relax their LSAT standards, the "beneficiaries" will have much lower bar pass rates than their classmates. They will be saddled with the same $200-250k of debt, though.

This trend is apparent at UC Hastings, whose admissions selectivity dropped significantly in the years following in the last decade, and whose bar pass rate plummeted. [1] (Many schools became less selective around 2010, when potential applicants heard about how the graduates of 2009 and 2010 had a very hard time finding jobs, let alone jobs that can service $200k debt loads.)

If these new policies/procedures do result in students being admitted to law school who can't pass the bar (or have to take it multiple times), these students could reasonably be upset for having been misled about their prospects. Of course, the schools are…

Traffic is an important concern. If it doesn't take proposition 13 into account, it's probably not going to be as effective as it should. Prop 13 creates too many financial incentives not to relocate to be near your job -- part of the reason that California has become a commute nightmare [0]. It also creates too strong an incentive to hang on to empty property and not improve it. [1]

That said, increasing the housing density in some of those currently-suburban areas (around Google, Apple, and Facebook, for example) could help them transform into more viable urban areas, without an increase in car traffic.

[0] http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/files/2008-19151-1.pdf
" observed changes in commuting patterns in major metropolitan areas in California support that hypothesis. In particular, between 1980 and 1990, the number of workers in San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles who commute outside the metropolitan statistical area to work increased 119 percent, 88 percent, and 80 percent, respectively. That is well above the growth in the number of similar commuters in other metropolitan areas across the nation, which generally ranged from 25 percent to 45 percent."

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/09/22/california_s_proposition_13_is_bad_policy_and_here_are_some_graphs_to_show.html

I truly wish you the best of luck, and for an excellent outcome.

One thing - you just can't say "why I'm getting a PhD", even from an elite school, the way you'd say "why I'm getting a law, medical, or business degree". Even if you've been admitted to an elite program, you can really only say "why I'm rolling the dice on the possibility of getting a PhD".

At elite programs, there is essentially no involuntary attrition in JD, MD, or MBA degrees. Yale law school has no 1L attrition. Columbia's JD 1L attrition is 0.3%. Attrition rates at elite med school is typically well below 1%.

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/04/law-school-ra-1.html

(I'll stop with the googling of links here...)

Attrition rates for engineering PhD students appear to be about 33%. This (to me, atrocious number) is way better than science or humanities.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/07/doctoral

Unlike JD, MD, MBA programs, I don't believe that the numbers are better at elite schools.

http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wicse/index.php/papers/lindareport2.pdf

I dunno, maybe Berkeley is a risky program, it is a notoriously harsh school.

In spite of all I've said, I'm always hesitant to give anyone advice. There are still remarkable careers to be had in academics. Good luck.

In the US: "In 2000, the top 25 percent of all taxpaying filers paid a whopping 83.6 percent of all income taxes. By 2005, they paid 85.6 percent of all taxes. So in spite of tax rate cuts for the well-off, the share of taxes paid by the well-off has risen." http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/sburns/stories/DN-burns_04bus.ART.State.Edition1.4603045.html - The irony is that tax cuts for the rich under the Bush Administration made taxation more progressive as it grew the overall tax base.

More here: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/10/top-1-pay-more-.html "The new data shows that the top-earning 25% of taxpayers (AGI over $62,068) earned 67.5% of the nation's income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (86%). The top 1% of taxpayers (AGI over $364,657) earned approximately 21.2% of the nation's income (as defined by AGI), yet paid 39.4% of all federal income taxes. That means the top 1% of tax returns paid about the same amount of federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95% of tax returns."

Interestingly, there's a pretty universal consensus among tax lawyers that not charging for employee lunches is problematic. Free, regular lunches are another form of compensation and, as such, should be listed on an employee's W-2 as additional taxable income.[1]

In general, anything of value that an employer gives you as compensation is taxable income to you unless an exclusion applies. There is an exclusion in section 119 of the tax code[2] for meals provided by an employer "for the convenience of the employee."

This has was intended to cover things like the cafeteria on an oil rig where alternatives are truly limited.

There was some talk of the IRS publishing regulations that would clarify this, but I don't think that's happened.

[1] e.g. http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/04/wsj-.html

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/119

Inherent unfairness? I'd love to see that argument laid out. The US has an extremely progressive tax code.

The top 1% receives 19% of all income and pays 49% of all income taxes. The top 10% pays 82% of all income taxes. What exactly do you plan to do, to make it more fair?

Most other developed countries have dramatically higher income taxes on their middle classes and have less progressive income tax distribution in terms of who pays. Which is why the US has roughly 50% higher median household disposable income than what Sweden, Britain, or Germany do: it's thanks to much lower taxes on the middle class (in those countries it's used for eg healthcare; in the US, people have a choice as to what they do with that disposable income).

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/03/joint-tax-committee-the-top-1-receives-19-of-all-income-.html