Patrice Wylly ’15, LLM ’18 brings her passion for tax and teaching back to NYU Law.
“Now I’m back where I always wanted to be,” says Patrice Wylly ’15, LLM ’18. This fall she returns to NYU Law, six years after receiving her LLM, as a professor of practice in the Graduate Tax Program. “I wanted to become a professor—that was always the goal,” she says.
On the way to achieving that aim, Wylly has followed a varied educational and career path. Most recently, she worked as a tax specialist at securities trading firm Jane Street and, from 2015 to 2020, as a tax associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Princeton University and an MSc in sociology from the University of Oxford.
“I am incredibly excited to welcome Patrice as a colleague on the NYU Law faculty,” says Mitchell Kane, Gerald L. Wallace Professor of Taxation. “Patrice brings a rare package of talents and skills—a wealth of practice experience in a firm and in-house, a true passion for teaching and pedagogy, and the temperament of a dedicated scholar and academic.”
Wylly says that her experience as a graduate student in sociology convinced her to go to law school as a path to academia. She liked the commitment to teaching that she saw at law schools, Wylly says, and she saw a bigger opportunity to have an impact: “[In] any natural or social science, you have to be descriptive, not normative,” she says. “I liked that in the law it’s actually appropriate to make policy suggestions when you’re writing something.”
At NYU Law, Wylly says, she immediately gravitated to tax. She remembers with particular appreciation the encouragement she received in her Income Taxation course from Daniel Shaviro, Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation. “Patrice was a great tax student here who became a great tax lawyer,” says Shaviro. “Her smarts and enthusiasm make her an outstanding addition for us, and immediately a valued member of the NYU tax community.”
After law school, Wylly went to Skadden to gain some experience in law practice. “I ended up staying longer than I intended,” she says. “I really liked all the collegiality at Skadden. I liked having the opportunity to work with the smartest minds in the field and be doing interesting cutting-edge work, of really high quality and with a lot of support.” At the firm, she worked on matters that included the tax consequences of taxable and tax-free mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity and hedge fund formation, and capital markets transactions. She also published a paper in the Virginia Tax Review on the earned income tax credit’s (EITC) effect on labor markets that took a cross-disciplinary approach, drawing on sociological and economic as well as legal analysis. As lower-income workers earn more, their EITC is reduced or eliminated. Conventional analysis usually posits that the EITC limits are a disincentive to work, but Wylly argued that workers often choose to work off the books instead.
“The idea that low-income taxpayers can use the informal labor market strategically has historically been overlooked,” she wrote. Moving to Jane Street in 2020, Wylly managed special tax structuring projects and advised on legal matters, including new tax legislation and tax planning opportunities. “I liked [having] the opportunity to see how things worked a little bit more in practice, and to have to actually live with the results of the work we did, which gives you a different perspective and makes you a better practitioner overall,” she says.
In 2023, she had a daughter. “Having a kid makes you reevaluate your priorities in life,” says Wylly. When Kane—whom she counts as one of her favorite tax law professors and mentors, alongside Shaviro—reached out to her about an opening at NYU Law, she was eager to apply. Leaving Jane Street in late 2023, Wylly took the opportunity to spend several months with her daughter before beginning her new role at NYU Law this fall.
“It had always been a dream of mine to come back into academia and, especially in tax, to be at NYU,” says Wylly. “There is such a good tax community here and so many students who are interested in it.”
“Most of all, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to form relationships with students,” she adds. “I am so excited to hear new perspectives.… Becoming a lawyer can be very stressful. I want to teach people substantive law, but also help them with what can be kind of a hard transition, from law school to the ‘real world.’”—Emily Rosenthal
Posted September 10, 2024