Moot Court: ABA Tax Law Competition

During the fall semester, students will earn one (1) unit of ungraded academic credit for participating on a two-student team in the written work portion of the ABA Law Student Tax Challenge (LSTC), a national tax planning and client-counseling competition designed to more closely reflect everyday tax practice than traditional moot court competitions. The LSTC is one of the largest tax competitions for law students in the United States.

Student participants at Lewis & Clark must comply with all of the rules of the LSTC, which typically require, among other things, that each team produce a memorandum and client correspondence on the tax consequences of a complex business-planning problem. The problem will be released by the ABA Tax Section late in the summer. It is intended to provide law students with the opportunity to research some “real-life” tax planning issues and to demonstrate their acquired tax knowledge, through their writing skills.

Each participant is responsible for locating and retaining his or her teammate for the competition. At the beginning of the term, students must attend several training sessions on techniques of federal tax research. Meeting times will be arranged among faculty and participants.

The faculty may select one or more entries for submission to the national competition. All satisfactory submissions will receive academic credit, however, even if they are not entered nationally. The written work will not satisfy any of the Law School’s writing requirements. The fall program will count for one (1) unit of credit toward the Certificate in Federal Tax Law.

Prerequisite: The competition is open to all students who have previously completed Income Tax I.

Skills: analysis, counseling

Students may not earn more than four (4) credit hours in any one skill area

ABA Tax National Competition

If one or more Lewis & Clark teams is chosen as a semi-finalist in the national competition, members of the team so selected will earn one (1) additional unit of ungraded academic credit in the spring semester for participating in the LSTC semi-finals (and finals, if applicable), typically held in conjunction with ABA Tax Section Midyear Meeting in January. The 2009 meeting is scheduled for New Orleans January 8th -10th. In this phase of the competition, team members must orally defend their written work from the fall semester before a panel typically made up of prominent tax attorneys.

The spring program will count for one (1) credit toward the Certificate in Federal Tax Law.

Prerequisite: Selection of the team’s written work by the ABA judges in the written work competition.