This was not the job that I had ever envisioned when I started law school or when I did my LLM, but it's been the most fulfilling job that I could have ever imagined. Attending Georgetown is one of the best decisions that I have ever made. Ellis, you did your undergrad at Tulane in management, and then you stayed for law school. What drew you specifically to the law after a business degree? And then what made you stay within New Orleans as well? That is a great question. So I did a business degree in international management, Latin American studies. And then I guess it's a funny story I'll tell. I I sort of thought I was thinking about either becoming a CPA or becoming a lawyer. And I wasn't sure which of those paths that I wanted. And I ended up doing both. Very practical decision on my part. So I got a master's of accounting and I left New Orleans to come to GW up here in DC for a year. And I guess there was just part of me that missed New Orleans a lot. I really missed the community there. I missed the festivals. I missed the school that I went to. And it was a little bit of a no-brainer for me to end up wanting to go back to Tulane. There was a year in between college and law school where I did my master's, but I ended up back at Tulane and in New Orleans where I thought I was going to begin my career there. Decided to go to law school. I thought with a master's in accounting, a CPA and a law degree, there was a lot that I could do, but there was also a lot that I didn't know at the same time, including that I wouldn't end up being in New Orleans, which was part of the interesting story. I came back to New Orleans thinking that I was going to practice there. And then when I discovered tax, I was encouraged by a lot of people that I talked to explore opportunities in larger cities. Not that New Orleans is not a great place to be a lawyer, but the opportunities for uh a sophisticated tax practice are limited there. You joined EY's New York MA tax practice straight out of Tulane. How did that experience set the bar for you for what you expected out of Dewey and LaBeouf when you arrived there in 2006? I don't know that I fully appreciated what I was getting into when I joined EY's MA group. I wouldn't say that I came into that job with significant tax knowledge. I had taken a basic federal income tax class in law school, and then I took a combined partnership and corporate class, and then I took a class on tax policy. And unfortunately, that was the extent of the offerings at my law school. I loved my time at EY. I will say that it was uh it was an amazing place to start my career. The training at the Big Four is fantastic. I think that there is formal training. I think that I spent my first three months doing a lot of individual classes, group classes there. I learned a lot and it helped that helped sort of bridge the gap between what I didn't learn in law school and what I needed to know on the job. And then there's a lot of great informal training there as well. I had an associate mentor, I had a partner mentor. The great thing about EY is that a lot of the work there is in teams. So me being a junior lawyer without any tax background, that was a great place for me to start because with a team, you're always, it's not just you, it's a team of usually mostly more experienced people than you. And that was really helpful for me to learn my way not only into the technical aspects, but also client development as well. Give us the day-to-day of what that was like for you at that time in New York City at EY. It was exciting. The bread and butter of a MA practice in a big four is due diligence. Usually it's for prospective buyers. It could be a corporate buyer, it could be private equity. Every transaction was a little bit different, involved a different, you know, that was one of the great things about starting an EY because you learn a lot, both in terms of tax, but every single deal is a little bit different. There is a different business objective. So you learn about that. There are usually different entities involved. And so you're learning about that. It's not just corporate entities, it's pass-through entities, LLCs, S-Corps, partnerships. There are cross-border aspects to everything. And so I saw the connection of all of those areas intersect with corporate tax, which was the firm focused on as well. I had a relatively good attitude about being a team player and accepting what the partners and others wanted me to do. And so my second and third year, I started doing a lot of more technical corporate work, a lot of opinion work, really corporate, thinking about corporate restructurings, reorganizations, and spin-offs. So a lot of opinion work, a lot of it was post-deal, where you know one corporate entity would uh acquire another company and want the company integrated into its consolidated group. And a lot of times that involved its own structuring after the deal, which I was involved in, a lot of opinion work. And that was fantastic. I think that that was some of the best uh highly technical, really interesting work that I got throughout my career. So it was a great place to start. There's a lot of different kinds of projects that a young associate would be involved in at a bit four. But I was lucky, I saw a little bit of everything that first year and then you know seguayed into more of the more of the corporate restructuring of my second and third years there. You moved to Dewey and LaBeouf in New York, and then to ropes in gray in Boston and DC. That's three stops in roughly 10 years. What were you learning at each stage that built upon the knowledge and experience you had gained previously? That's a great question. I think that at EY, I learned the value of teamwork. I think that many times your many deals and projects at at a big four like EY are you're working in teams. So it's not just you alone. And which is why I think it's a great place for a junior lawyer to start, because you have a lot more senior people there to bounce ideas off of. And so I never felt like I was going it alone. There were always many others there to help guide me along the way. So I would say I learned the value of teamwork. I also learned the value of just, you know, reaching out and, you know, asking those questions. Like you, you're supposed to ask questions. And I think a lot of junior people get into roles and they don't understand the scope of what they're being asked to do and they are afraid to ask questions. And I learned quickly that that was not, I I absolutely needed guidance from more senior people. So when I moved to Dewey, the the structure of many transactions, I really was not working on a team. Most of the time it was perhaps me and one partner working with the corporate team on a transaction. But in the on the tax side of things, in the planning side, it was usually just me and a partner, or I would be working on multiple deals with multiple partners. I think that the hours, they were pretty intense in a big law firm. So I think that I had to learn organizational skills. I really had to learn how to prioritize tasks and communicate with the people who I was working with to make sure that, you know, that I understood what the the true deadline is for everything. And on many transactions, if I was working for the same partner, it was not uncommon for me to work for one or two partners on several matters at the same time. And the the important question for a junior person is to ask what to prioritize. You could be working on four or five matters, and you need to know which of these is the most pressing, what what is the most time sensitive and where you should allocate your time. Now, moving from Dewey to ropes and gray, now that was that was actually substantively a very different job than the move from EY to Dewey, because I moved from doing what was essentially corporate tax almost exclusively working for corporate clients to working for private equity and hedge fund clients. So there's a different kinds of transactions, different kinds of business objectives. And most importantly, I had to move from knowing corporate tax to knowing partnership tax and international tax. And a lot of my students tell me that they don't want to take partnership tax because it's hard, or they don't necessarily understand the value of it if they want to go into a corporate practice. And I always say, no, you absolutely have to take partnership tax. And I was certainly glad that I did take partnership tax when I moved over to ropes and gray because I needed it day in, day out. I pulled out my outline. I couldn't imagine having to learn partnership tax on the job. So I I think it, you know, at ropes and gray, I learned the the value of needing to pivot. And, you know, sometimes your career leads you to having to, you know, do something completely different. Dewey filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and its leadership faced fraud indictments two years later. How did that news confirm or reshape the calculus you made in 2008 when you chose a different platform? The news was a little bit shocking to all of us who had worked there. I would say at the time that the firm got in indicted, the the majority of the people that I had worked with had already joined other firms anyway. I had just left earlier than some other people within the tax practice there. I I didn't have a lot of experience with the merged firm. I started with the legacy Dewey Ballantine firm that merged with LaBeouflam, another New York-based law firm. I think it was either the end of 2007 or the beginning of 2008. And I left mid-2008. So I don't know that I have a lot of experience or a lot to say about the merged firm. Well, what I would say is like my reasons for moving were twofold. First, the tax practice there doubled in size, and the scope of the work was a lot different than what I had done beforehand. So that sort of made me start to think about whether the merged firm was the right fit for me. And the second reason that I guess I left that firm was more of a geographic consideration. I was looking to relocate. I love New York City, but I think that I lived in New York City at that point for six years. And I was looking for geographically a little bit of a different city. I had done my LLM and my master's degree in Washington, D.C. And I really had fond memories of living in D.C. And the an opportunity with Ropes and Gray came up came about in the earlier part of 2008 to join. I was I was sitting in D.C., but I was really working for a lot of people in Boston. But you know, coming down to DC was very an intriguing prospect for me. And so I think most of my, you know, the reason that I left was mostly geographic, was to sort of build a new life here in Washington, which I love, by the way. I I love living in DC. I I the tax community here, it's so dynamic. And I I always think of Washington, I always tell people I think it's the center of the tax universe because it is. And it's a very exciting place to be a tax lawyer. What was your experience like studying in DC when you were younger? Oh, fantastic. A wonderful place to study. I'll I'll say the LLM program in particular was my favorite year of school. I hope you feel that way too, because I I definitely feel that the LLM program was phenomenal. I think the real drawing point for me, one thing that I really enjoyed, that I think a lot of my students enjoy, and it's and it's sort of a Washington thing, too, is just the number of adjunct faculty working in so many different interesting places. Uh, they've come in and out of the government. Sometimes some of my professors actually either drafted the legislation that I was studying or drafted administrative guidance. They worked at the IRS, you know, working on a regulation, writing rulings. And just to have that sort of insight into the classroom, I thought was was just phenomenal. And it's it's just one of those things that it's a very, it's a very DC-centric sort of experience, I guess, coming to Georgetown for my LLM. What I really enjoyed about DC was just the dynamic of people's careers sort of intersecting with the government and the experience that they gain there, bring it, bringing that experience back into private practice, bringing it back into the classroom. Attending Georgetown is one of the best decisions that I have ever made. And as a part-time evening student working full-time, I feel so supported by the professors within this endeavor to challenge myself in such a productive way. And approaching the end of the first year, I'm very glad that I still have one more year left. It's honestly hard to imagine only having one year at Georgetown. I I hope that I know that my peers, colleagues, fellow students, that they're making the most of the experience because it's necessarily time limited. It goes from August to May before you know it. I know. I I sort of I'm honest when I say that it was the best year. I feel like it was the best year of my life because I just learned so much and I met so many people. And when I talk to prospective students and even, you know, current students at orientation, um, and I tell you that uh it will fly by. I'm not I'm not kidding, because it really does. And it's uh you just sort of get into it and you're you're almost absorbed by your classes and and all of the activities that are part of this program, and that it's it's almost sad. I feel bad for the students who have to leave in six weeks. So me too. So but we're good, we're glad you're you're here for another year. I think that's good. Alice, you you had the resume to stay in big law in MA tax indefinitely, two AMLAW 50 shops, blue chip deal work. What moment between 2010 and 2012 convinced you that building the country's largest graduate tax program at Georgetown Law would create more leverage than billing another decade of deals? That's a great question. Making partner at any of these firms or any other firm for that matter is really hard. I saw that not only would I need to probably bill significantly more than 2,000 hours, which is the minimum. The associates who did make partner were billing probably 2,500 or more hours per year. You also have two other jobs if you want to go up the chain in a law firm. You have the job of client development. You need to be able to at some point make a business case for yourself at most firms, at least. Um, and that requires additional work outside of your client commitments. And you and I know that there's also as a tax lawyer, you have professional development work. That is a continuing piece of your practice as a tax lawyer, is you have to be keeping up with changes in the law. You have to go to conferences, you have to be involved in the community. A lot of times you're speaking on panels, you're writing articles, you're, in your case, doing a podcast, which I think is wonderful. There are there are all kinds of things that you have to do to develop yourself professionally. I to be honest, I have other, I love my job and I love tax, but I have other interests outside of having three jobs like wrapped into one and making making a run for partner somewhere. So, what did this look like? I guess this was 2011 when I ended up finally going through the process of thinking about what it was that I wanted to do next. And I I sort of saw three different buckets of things. And the first bucket was a smaller firm, right? So a smaller firm, less of a commitment, a more reasonable work-life balance. The second bucket was interesting because I was thinking about uh, you know, making government a career, like possibly transitioning off to say the IRS. I was really kind of had my sights set on, you know, corporate division of the IRS, like maybe going into the corporate, the corporate group of the IRS, which unfortunately at the time was not hiring. There was a you know hiring freeze there, which is happens pretty frequently at the IRS. And the third bucket was the, I don't know, what what else can one do with a background in tax law that is not working for a big law firm or a law firm at all and maybe not even practicing. So sometimes you don't know what you don't know, right? And that's the truth. So I sort of approached this part of my career as I did when I started my career as a tax lawyer. I did pretty extensive networking and ended up at Georgetown just sort of by chance, because I had a networking meeting with the former director of the tax program, uh Albert Lauber, who's uh now a judge of the tax court. And I'd originally approached him about, you know, sort of like being in transition, wanting to think about kind of ways to, you know, segue into the government, perhaps, uh, wanting to get his thoughts. And I think that through the course of the meeting, a good networking meeting, you don't know where it's going to take you. And you don't know what kind of information you're going to get out of that meeting. And what I did learn, I came away from the meeting learning that he actually needed to hire an assistant director to come uh design, help, help design courses for a contract that we had received from the IRS to put on some CLE and also help develop the the first online program at Georgetown, like take us into the online space. And so I said I was very interested, sign me up and uh end of 2011, I I joined uh Georgetown. That was never on my bingo card. Like that was not this was not the job that I had ever envisioned when I started law school or when I did my LO lab. But it's been the most fulfilling job that I could have ever imagined.