“We started talking about it when things were going great in the legal market,” said Dean Robert Rasmussen. “Quite frankly, the demand was drying up and people coming out of the tax LL.M. program would not have had the same prospects as students coming out with a J.D. from USC. The recession hit, and we just didn’t feel comfortable saying, ‘Please give us $50,000 and a year of your life,’ unless we could improve their job prospects.”
The school launched a feasibility study in 2007 and planned to open the program with approximately 15 students, eventually increasing that number to 30. The tax LL.M. would have been USC’s first LL.M. program for domestic students. It already has one for international students.
