This week’s Tax Prof Spotlight of Michael Yu (Cal-Western) continues our series of profiles of folks starting their careers this fall as tenure-track tax professors at American law schools. We hope the profiles will help introduce our newest tax colleagues to the academic tax community.
Michael Yu credits his federal income tax professor at Columbia, Anne Alstott (now Deputy Dean and Jacquin D. Bierman Professor of Taxation at Yale), with sparking his interest in tax law. “Her course really inspired me. Tax was interesting and exciting, and I remember knowing immediately that I wanted to become a tax lawyer.”
Before law school, where he was an articles editor for the Journal of Chinese Law, Yu received an A.B., in Government, from Harvard College. During law school, he served as an extern law clerk to Magistrate Judge Theodore Katz, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. After law school, Yu earned a tax LL.M. from NYU and then worked as an attorney advisor for Tax Court Judge Thomas Wells.
He next entered private practice in San Francisco, working first at a tax litigation and estate planning boutique and then in the estate planning group of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro. Seeking a little less fog, he left San Francisco to join an estate planning firm in Los Angeles.
Yu then earned a fellowship to teach at Cal-Western in San Diego for the 2003-04 academic year, during which he taught International Tax and Trusts & Estates. “During my fellowship, I received tremendous mentoring from the faculty, especially from Philip Manns, who teaches trusts and estates and all of the tax classes. I then applied for a full-time teaching position and was very lucky to be appointed as an assistant professor at Cal-Western beginning in Fall 2004.”
Outside of school, Yu has joined the Board of San Diego’s Affordable Housing Advocates. The organization focuses on monitoring the affordable housing obligations set forth in California’s Community Redevelopment Law. “By seeking to have existing law enforced, the organization helps to ensure that lost units are replaced and that housing funds set aside by law are properly spent on affordable housing development.”
Yu very much enjoys teaching and is currently researching an article on the intersection between income in respect of a decedent and distributable net income. “I am so honored to be entering this profession. It has been incredibly challenging but also extremely rewarding and fun.”
Each Saturday, TaxProf Blog shines the spotlight on one of the 700+ tax professors in America’s law schools. We hope to help bring the many individual stories of scholarly achievements, teaching innovations, public service, and career moves within the tax professorate to the attention of the broader tax community. Please email me suggestions for future Tax Prof Profiles, particularly for our series on new tax professors. For prior Tax Prof Profiles, see here.
