Emily M. Lam

With two decades of experience as a tax lawyer, including three years with the U.S. Treasury Department, Lam is a leading adviser to big businesses and high-net worth people who’ve drawn the attention of the Internal Revenue Service.

Her practice centers on tax controversies, though she describes her work as building relationships.

“I’m not the person who shows up in court,” she said. “I view myself in many ways as a problem-solver, a negotiator, a relationship person, thinking about the relationship with the IRS.”

Lam, the head of Skadden’s Palo Alto office, cannot identify any clients, given the nature of her work.

In one case, for a biotech company facing potential taxes on $11 billion, her approach produced a unique closing agreement that gave the company credit for events that took place in years after the period under review. It was so unusual that the IRS’s associate chief counsel, international, personally had to sign off on it.

Lam gives the credit to IRS personnel conducting the examination. “That’s what stood out to me, their appetite and willingness to do something creative,” she said.

One long-running controversy Lam has not yet resolved concerns whether the free meals many tech companies regularly provide their workers should be taxed. “Neither the taxpayer nor the Internal Revenue Service really seems willing to let go of the issue,” she said.

Lam also represents a number of charities and nonprofits, including a large healthcare system she is counseling after it was publicly criticized over some interested-party transactions. She advised the client about reporting requirements and how to demonstrate it is fixing problems.

For another pro bono project close to her heart, Lam represents a community foundation establishing college savings accounts for underprivileged children in hopes to implant the conviction in the children that they can go to college. “It’s very powerful and very cool,” she said.

The tricky tax issue for businesses underwriting the accounts is how to treat money going to children who happen to be children of the businesses’ employees. The goal is for the IRS to agree on a structure that avoids bad tax consequences.

“Any certainty the service can give us would help open up additional avenues of funding. And the work these folks are doing is just incredible.”

— Don DeBenedictis