Gail Levin Richmond (Nova)
- A.B. 1966, Michigan
- M.B.A. 1967, Michigan
-
J.D. 1971, Duke
Although my career plans never included teaching or law, I’ve taught tax at the law school level since 1972. After calculus ended my one-semester career as a math major, I ended up in the Economics Department just before it became impossible for someone with no advanced math skills to earn that degree. (The formulas were in the books, but only as footnotes.) At the time, all Econ majors were required to take a semester of Accounting. I’m embarrassed to admit that I took quite a few more—but not so many that I’d be banished from Literature, Science and the Arts over to Business.
An undergraduate degree in Economics prepared me for nothing that would put bread on the table, so I got my M.B.A., spent a year on Arthur Andersen’s tax staff in Chicago, and managed to pass the CPA exam. Two things were very clear to me that year. First, AA & Co was ambivalent about having women on the staff. Second, the road to promotion led through law school. Almost everyone senior to me was attending evening law school or already had a law degree. I applied to the evening program at one of the Chicago schools and was accepted subject to my taking the LSAT—those were simpler times.
In any event, I scored high enough that several staff members who had gotten degrees elsewhere called their law schools to see if anyone would give a scholarship in May to someone who hadn’t even applied for classes starting in August. I was fortunate enough to get several positive responses and ended up at Duke. (I went to both Michigan and Duke without ever having seen either school. There is a pattern here.)
My class began with somewhat more than 100 students but quickly dropped—1968 was the year they ended graduate deferments, and the military took many of my classmates. About 85 of the original class stayed through graduation, augmented by a handful of returnees from other classes or transfers from other law schools. My class was close, not merely because we were so few, but also we were the first class to experience a curriculum revision that put both Con Law and Legal Accounting in the first year. We were also the last to experience Legal Accounting in the first year.
Because I had planned to return to AA & Co after law school, I made contact with the Duke accounting department and graded for several of the professors. I also taught a tax accounting course there my last year in law school. I returned to AA & Co for the summer after my first year of law school. Needless to say, I took several tax courses in law school.
I clerked for Jones, Day in Cleveland after my second year, and ultimately accepted an offer to return there following graduation. Why Cleveland, another place I’d never seen before? It was close enough to my parents in Indiana and my then in-laws in New York to satisfy no one but avoid favoritism complaints from either family. As it turned out, I loved Cleveland.
I did not take Estate & Gift Tax (or Securities Regulation) because the rumor was that law firms pigeon-holed women into trusts & estates or blue sky law. So, of course, the major project that I worked on during my summer clerkship was a fascinating estate tax case. Fortunately, I worked only on the corporate valuation aspect and used my accounting background. When I returned to Jones, Day after graduation, I worked on state tax issues, a corporate restructuring, equipment leasing tax shelters, exempt organizations, and even some foreign tax matters. I can’t imagine staying on top of all those areas today.
I fell into law teaching after one year of practicing law. (A leap implies conscious thought; there was none here.) I was recommended to Capital University by Tom Read, an Associate Dean at Duke to whom I’d been a thoroughly obnoxious law student. When they asked him for names of grads able to fill last-minute positions, I think he partly saw it as payback. He recommended both Richmonds and off we went. Although I didn’t like Columbus (which I had at least seen previously, when I took the bar exam), teaching turned out to be wonderful and I’m still in contact with folks at Capital.
So here I am, 33 years later, primarily teaching Income Tax, Income Tax for the Uninterested, Tax Research, and Legal Accounting. I’ve also taught Corporate Tax, Estate & Gift Tax, and Estate Planning. I’ve taught, in one capacity or another, at Capital, Duke, Miami, North Carolina, Nova, and Texas. Convincing students that tax is both enjoyable and relevant, even though it is (a) hard and (b) not on the bar exam, still excites me. And, although I also moved to Fort Lauderdale sight unseen, I now think of heat and humidity as the natural state of affairs.
I’ve been Academic Associate Dean at Nova since 1981 (a three-year term that somehow morphed into the myth of Sisyphus). In that capacity, I spend a lot of time twisting faculty arms regarding teaching on Friday, grading promptly, and thinking about career paths. (I’m from the do as I say, not as I did, school of deaning.) I’m actively involved with the ABA Tax Section and the Southeastern Association of Law Schools, and I regularly serve as a site inspector for the ABA Section of Legal Education or the AALS. When I have free time, I read mysteries, attend Duke men’s and women’s basketball games, and go to the theatre. I also love to travel and to listen to classical music. (Did I mention that I once played the oboe and the glockenspiel?) My children will earn master’s degrees this December; neither has expressed an interest in law school.
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. For prior Tax Prof Profiles, see here.
