Jimmy was a recent graduate of a top ten law school. He had done well in school and thus had numerous job offers upon graduation. He decided to accept an offer with the local office of a large law firm. Although the local tax department was small (2 partners and 2 other associates), the tax department firm wide had about 25 attorneys. By starting in a smaller local office, Jimmy felt that this would give him an opportunity to be mentored and work on quality projects.

The first few years he did all types of tax work, corporate, partnerships, exempt organizations, international, employee benefits, controversy, etc. When things were slow, as they often were for Jimmy, he did some corporate and litigation work too. He sent e-mails to the various tax partners and would often meet with them on a one on one basis when he heard of new tax projects (regardless of the size). He often got a verbal commitment to be considered on these projects but eventually the project would go to another associate. He also often tried to get work from the tax partners in the other offices. He would reintroduce himself every year at the firm wide retreats to the tax partners in the other offices, and attended any seminars in which a tax partner from his firm was a presenter. However, none of these efforts panned out. He heard rumors these partners turned him down because he wasn't experienced enough in their particular substantive areas, which were primarily corporate, employee benefits and international in the other offices. He felt perplexed - How would he get the required experience if he were not actually doing the work?

As for the other two associates, Paul was senior to him and had spent several years at the IRS doing corporate work before coming to the firm. Thus, all of the corporate tax work went to Paul. The other associate, Mark, was the same year as Jimmy. Although Mark started out doing all types of tax work like Jimmy, one of the partners took Mark under his wings such that Mark was fast on his way to becoming the employee benefits expert. The other tax partner focused in the international tax area but rarely used associates for help.

Four years passed and the variety in Jimmy's workload had not changed much. He was well liked at his firm and received great reviews (he was still officially on partnership track). However, he was doing less and less tax work everyday. In addition the firm was beginning to build a strong corporate practice and wanted Jimmy to be a part of it. In fact, in his last review, Jimmy realized that his hours spent doing tax related worked had dropped to less than 45% of his total hours. Now he was officially doing "other" legal work the majority of the time. He often complained about this in his reviews but again the tax partners continued to promise to get him more involved.

Although the tax partners were cordial and occasionally invited him to lunch, he was never invited to social settings outside of the office like the other associates (i.e., golf, dinner parties, etc.). Interestingly, Jimmy was an avid golf player with a handicap of 10. This was well known by all the partners. Yet in his 4 years at the firm he had only played golf with the tax partners once and that was at a firm wide golf outing. However, the corporate partners often invited him to lunch and to golf outings outside of work.

At a recent CLE class, Jimmy ran into one of his friends from law school. It turns out that this friend took a job in the national tax office of a major accounting firm. The friend remarked about how much he had learned in the last three years. He had been doing corporate work and as they began to talk shop Jimmy realized how little he really had been doing. His friend had worked on several M&A transactions in excess of a billion dollars and on numerous IPO's. Jimmy had worked on two rather small corporate acquisitions and on one deal he served as the corporate lawyer as well. He was beginning to realize that he had spread his substantive tax knowledge too thin.

Jimmy is the only minority in the tax group (again 25 attorneys firm wide). He felt like he never worked on the sexy issues because they either went to other more experienced attorneys or to attorneys who were being mentored by a particular partner. Instead he was busy doing all the corporate grunt work just to keep his hours up. Jimmy is well aware of the rumor that minorities are not smart enough to do tax. In fact the tax department has only had one minority attorney before Jimmy and that attorney transferred to the employment litigation group after one year. That attorney warned Jimmy that the tax group was not very friendly and that he should switch to a substantive area were the partners were more approachable.

Although Jimmy never felt discriminated against by his department, he often wondered why the partners, other than a few occasional lunches here and there, never invited him to the after work social activities. He also found some of their comments in his reviews a little troubling. The were mainly comments like Jimmy is a sociable, articulate guy and clients really like to talk to Jimmy; however his substantive knowledge of the tax field needs work. Again, Jimmy would re-approach these partners about improving his substantive knowledge and they would always promise to put him on their next assignment. However, this rarely happened.

Jimmy now has a family with one child and one on the way. Also, his wife has a very good job, so relocating to one of the bigger offices is not an option.