Ruth Mason, host of UConn’s Tax Lecture Series, continues our series on how to best structure a tax policy workshop series:

Established in 2006, the University of Connecticut Tax Lecture Series is not a formal course. Instead, throughout the year, we have invited three to four tax faculty members from other schools, aiming for two lectures in the fall and two in the spring. Lectures are open to the whole law school community, and student participation has been fairly active, in part because the tax faculty strongly encourages our students to attend, and the paper is available at least a week in advance of the lecture. I also ask the students in my classes who will attend the lectures to write out questions in advance of the lecture, which I think has contributed to the high quality of the discussion. Additionally, when a lecture touches on other areas of law, I usually contact the relevant faculty member. So, for example, when Michael Tumpel of Johannes Kepler University in Linz talked about indirect taxation in the European Union, I contacted my colleague Willajeanne McLean, who teaches EU law. She asked her students to attend the lecture, which produced an informed audience. Since the lecture series is not a formal course, the students do not have the benefit of the kind of advanced discussion that takes place at NYU or Indiana.