Job Details

You picked tax because you wanted the intellectually hardest work in the building.

Three years in, you're spending more time on partnership compliance than on structuring.

Every M&A deal needs you. Every PE fund formation needs you. Every venture-backed exit needs you. You design the rollover, draft the tax opinion, work through Section 382 on the post-closing NOLs. Without your sign-off, deals don't close.

But the M&A partner gets the client credit. The corporate partner has the sponsor relationship. You get a 9pm Friday email asking whether the management equity rollover triggers a deemed exchange. You're indispensable to every transaction and invisible in all of them.

And half your week is still on routine partnership work that has nothing to do with why you went into tax in the first place.

The Bay Area has a tax market most cities can't match. Pre-IPO tech companies structuring secondaries and tender offers. PE-backed life sciences platforms with cross-border IP structures. Venture fund formation at institutional scale. R&D credit and QSBS planning that actually moves the needle. The sophisticated work is here — but only at the platforms that originate it.

A top-tier AmLaw firm with one of the most respected transactional tax practices in the country is hiring a mid-level tax associate in San Francisco or Silicon Valley. This isn't a tax group that supports the corporate practice as a side function — it's a tax group that drives the structuring on the most complex deals the firm runs.

The work includes:

• M&A tax structuring for PE sponsors, technology companies, and life sciences clients
• Private equity and venture fund formation, partnership taxation, and management equity
• REIT and real estate fund structuring, including platform deals and joint ventures
• Cross-border transactions, leveraged buyouts, recapitalizations, and tax-free reorganizations
• Capital markets and securities offerings with novel tax structures

What you bring:

• 3-4 years of transactional tax experience at a major law firm (class of 2022-2023)
• Corporate tax / M&A focus — not SALT, not accounting-firm-style compliance
• Strong analytical instincts and comfort owning material workstreams independently
• California bar or eligibility to obtain

What you get:

• A tax practice that drives structuring, not one that papers other people's deals
• Sophisticated PE, tech, and biotech work — the kind of structuring problems that made you go into tax in the first place
• Cravath scale plus signing bonus and guaranteed full year-end bonus for top candidates

Apply here directly or send your resume confidentially to srushing@laterallink.com