Tax & Estate Planning Clinic

The Tax & Estate Planning Clinic provides students with an immersive, supervised experience in both income tax controversy representation and foundational estate and incapacity planning.
In the tax component, students represent low-income individuals with IRS controversies through administrative advocacy and litigation in U.S. Tax Court. In the process, students develop their practical lawyering skills (investigating facts, statutory and regulatory analysis, client interviewing and counseling, written and oral advocacy, and case management) in the context of common issues that tax practitioners wrangle with (characterization valuation, timing, documentation, and statutes of limitation). Students do not need to have prior tax education or experience.
In the estate and incapacity planning component, students counsel clients and prepare documents such as wills, trusts, deeds, financial powers of attorney, and advance medical directives. Drawing on property law, elder law and public benefits law, this work helps clients make informed, legally effective financial and health-care decisions and promotes generational financial and housing stability.
The LITC is a 7-credit course and meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement. Students must enroll in the 4-credit clinic and the 3-credit seminar, taken concurrently. The 4-credit clinic and 3-credit seminar are mandatory, graded, and ineligible for letter grade conversion to pass (“P”) election.
The Clinic fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement. The Clinic fulfills the Statutory or Regulatory Course Distribution Requirement for graduation.