Omri Marian, the academic director of the graduate tax program at the University of California, Irvine, discusses his role in preparing the next generation of tax professionals and virtual teaching during the coronavirus pandemic with Tax Notes reporter Jonathan Curry.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jonathan Curry: Omri, thank you so much for taking time to talk with me today.
Omri Marian: Glad to be here.
Jonathan Curry: I've been interested to find out how you, as a law professor, are adapting to teaching during a pandemic. What does the typical class look like right now?
Omri Marian: All classes right now are done through Zoom. They're completely online. They're live classes, so at least in theory, they're the same as regular classes, except that they're being done online. That, of course, is in theory, because I find it much harder to figure out students' responses when you can't actually see or hear them. The worst thing is when I tell a joke. I have no idea if anyone is laughing.
I can tell you that it is challenging because the interaction is not the same as it is in live context, but it is much better than I expected. I think leadership — legal education generally across the country and also in our school — did a fantastic job of moving online and adapting to the situation very quickly.
I don't think there is a major interruption in terms of the content the students are getting. I would say, so far, so good. I think it is also too early in the process to tell what are the long-term effects of this.
Jonathan Curry: Have you heard any feedback from professors and students and how they're handling this so far?
Omri Marian: One of the things that I'm seeing is the creativity of professors. They're finding new ways to teach students. For example, I recorded a song for my students over a presentation of the tax issues that we discussed at that point, which was deductions. Other professors are hosting celebrities in their classes, which was also something I did. I had Oscar Nunez — Oscar from "The Office" — greet my class.
Jonathan Curry: How did you manage to get Oscar Nunez involved?
Omri Marian: Oh, I paid him. There's no magic.
Jonathan Curry: There you go.
Omri Marian: The thing is getting students engaged in different ways. The students are doing a really good job trying to be there. This is amazing, because I really think it is much more challenging to students than it is to professors. It is very taxing to teach online for 90 minutes or two hours at a time, but I only have to do it once or twice a day. For students, their full-time schedule is basically sitting in front of the computer and learning online.
I'm quite amazed at how well they're doing so far. That said, I'm also happy that there are only three and a half weeks left for the semester, so they don't have to cope with it for too long — at least not for this semester.
Jonathan Curry: As I understand, UCI Law's tax program is perhaps a little bit different than most. Could you tell us a little about the program? What are some of the unique ways that you're preparing the next generation of tax professionals?
Omri Marian: I'd been asked about four years ago to start a tax program at UCI by the previous dean. I said that I'd be willing to do so provided that myself and the other involved faculty would get the resources to start a program that is different than other programs.
We didn't want to have just another tax program. There are about 25 or 30 tax programs in the country now. Just having another one was not very appealing to us.
What we did for over a year was travel all around the country and interview tax professionals. We were trying to figure out what we can make different and what other tax programs do not currently offer. I think we came up with a pretty unique curriculum compared to other tax programs, at least in two aspects.
One of them is the practical aspect. Our program is clearly divided between a doctrinal piece and a practical piece. You have to meet a practical tax skills requirement, which students do through an externship. During the second semester of the program, they're only on campus three days. The other two days they're away at their places of externship. They actually graduate the program with real practical experience.
We have all kinds of employers participating in our externship program: law firms, state and federal agencies, and multinational corporations. For example, right now we have externs at SpaceX, Activision, and Mayer Brown. Because this is a mandatory requirement, it's pretty different than any other program.
Something we heard from employers is that they really wanted students to be ready for the tax profession of tomorrow, not the one of today. They want them to know how to provide legal advice based on data and how to work with new platforms that assist tax professionals.
We decided that we're going to take it very seriously, and we incorporated these platforms or these ideas into our program. For example, we have a cooperation with Alteryx, which is a big data analytics company. We actually built a whole course around their platform, in which students are basically given thousands and thousands of rows of data and are required to create reports that contain legal advice based on the data.
We're incorporating a natural language processing based software in our tax classes, so we have a cooperation with the firm called Blue J Legal based in Toronto. It has a machine-learning platform, which is based on natural language processing, trying to predict the outcomes' impacts. This is incorporated in many of our courses. I have to say, I'm amazed at how well the software is working.
We have a tax modeling class where we teach lawyers how to model tax outcomes based on data. We are really focused on preparing students based on how we think the tax practice is going to look like in the next three to five years.
Jonathan Curry: Do you think that these skills that you're training students for are broadly applicable? Or are they more aimed at the bigger firms and companies that have a lot of resources?
Omri Marian: No, I think they are broadly applicable for two reasons.
First of all, many of the large firms are now adopting these tools. We're making our students more marketable in that sense because they're coming into the Big Four or similar large firms with that knowledge. They don't have to be trained in-house to acquire the skills.
What we're seeing with the platforms is the democratization of data, or the democratization of AI. This software make it very easy and relatively cheap for anyone to analyze big data without being a data scientist. I'm not a data scientist or a programmer, and yet I teach the class on tax and data analytics because I'm able to do it given how easy the software or the platforms make the use of big data.
I expect that the first adopters will be the Big Four and large multinationals, but also that very quickly this will get into government. The IRS already does a lot of work with data analytics and AI.
I also expect that small firms will be able to leverage this software very easily. For example, the software we're working with that is based on natural language processing. If you learn how to work with it, you can cut your research time on a legal question. You can cut the first 10 to 20 hours of research.
This is something that I think is going to be extremely appealing, especially tax controversy with big firms. I expect that it will take them a bit more time to adopt, but they will eventually. I cannot imagine the practices remain the same in the next five or 10 years, given that these technologies are going to be very commonly used in the tax world.
Jonathan Curry: What would you say to someone who might argue that this is a zero-sum bargain? You're teaching these practical or technical skills, but it's coming at the expense of doctrinal knowledge of the law itself.
Omri Marian: First, that's wrong because I'm also teaching the law itself. The program is very doctrinal in the first semester. We absolutely do not neglect the doctrinal aspect of it. I honestly don't think you can be a good tax lawyer if you don't have doctrinal knowledge.
I will tell it now to any future student, tax professional, even people that adopt it: this will be useless for you if you're not a great doctrinal person. This is true for any AI application, not only in law. It's nice if you're a data scientist, if you know how to work with data. But it is unhelpful to you if you're not also a subject matter expert, if you don't know how to put the data to use. You can only do that if you actually know the law.
I don't think this is going to replace lawyers. I think it is going to change the way lawyers work. It's going to change how many people are assigned to a specific task or how lawyers approach a specific task. It may create new lines of work within the legal profession.
But at the end of the day, there's going to have to be a lawyer there to make a judgment call, to drive the memo, and to give advice based on legal experience. I think it will change the legal market. I don't think it's going to replace lawyers. I absolutely do not think it is going to replace the need to have very good doctrinal knowledge of tax law.
Jonathan Curry: Is there anything that you wish that you had known as a tax student?
Omri Marian: Oh, yes. Here's a personal story. I did a tax LLM at the University of Michigan and then I went to practice at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. Probably 50 percent of what I did there was structured notes offering — the tax aspect of it, which meant I actually had to know how to use Excel. I had to learn it on job, which was not a very pleasant experience.
One piece of advice I'd give to tax students right now, is to still focus on doctrine because I think as lawyers this is the most important part. But you really need to be open to acquire and try to acquire yourself new skills. It's actually not that hard to acquire those skills. Again, the democratization of data is something quite amazing. You can find ways to acquire the skills you need to give you the edge of a successful tax lawyer for very cheap.
My advice to tax students is find the time to know a little bit more about data analytics and about basic data analytics software, even just Excel, through online courses. If you are able to intelligently discuss data analytics in an interview, this will give you a huge advantage over people who can't. Most people, unfortunately, in law schools can't today.
Jonathan Curry: Well, Omri, that does it for my questions. But I thank you so much for taking time to talk to us today. I really appreciate it.
Omri Marian: It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.