Emily M. Lam

Lam, the managing partner at Skadden’s Palo Alto office, is a specialist in tax controversies.

In a year like no other, she has maintained an eventful practice while dealing with issues surrounding her dispersed workforce. “The year has been fantastic from a business perspective, with the firm extremely busy. Were we not in a pandemic, that would be a good problem to have. But the pandemic has also brought an overlay of strict government safety rules from the county, the state and even from the City of Palo Alto,” she said. “That has brought complexity as we try to manage the situations of our folks in various home life situations.”

Along with the stresses on families and on individuals living solo, there are tricky tax and law license issues for some who have temporarily relocated to other states, Lam noted. “There’s been a lot of unusual mobility this last year, bringing State Bar licensing and state tax rules into play,” she said. “Will some states take a permissive view of where income is earned? What about work time recording? There are competing interests, and it’s too early to tell from a tax perspective, because the audit cycle is of course delayed.”

Lam does not identify clients, but her matters are significant and varied. She represents a medical technology company in Internal Revenue Service Appeals on tax accounting issues. She is advising on a Private Letter Request to the IRS relating to highly technical retirement plan issues for a financial institution. She is handling a transfer pricing audit for a large internet company. For high net worth founders of pre-public companies, she is providing philanthropic planning and structuring advice.

The IRS itself has faced significant challenges during a time when its own offices were shuttered, Lam said.

“The mail has been backing up, even from the biggest taxpayers with significant dollars involved. There are lots of agency folks trying to do their jobs from home, but there are security limitations on what they can do, such as printing at home. On the audit front—my world—some cases have seen not so much as a hiccup, and some have been delayed by months. And now we see signals that there will be an uptick in high net worth individual compliance efforts.”

— John Roemer