November 2014: I was laying in bed reading abovethelaw.com when to my delight I ran across the newly announced Cravath bonus scale (Cravath is a New York law firm that is often the first to announce its associate year-end bonus numbers). Cooley had never been a market leader when it came to bonuses, but it generally was a market follower. The numbers were way up, a nod to the fact that the recession was finally behind us. I immediately texted two of my ninth-year associate colleagues the good news. We rejoiced together.
January 2015: A partner entered my office. I was handed an envelope containing my bonus check and given a brief “thank you for your good work” speech. As soon as he left, I ripped open the letter and pulled out the check. What the fetch? It was $30,000 less than the Cravath scale. This despite the fact that I had billed approximately $1,400,000 for Cooley that year.
Within ten minutes the same two colleagues that I had shared the bonus news with in November were in my office, quietly pulling the door shut behind them. “We’re out.” I stared at them, my head spinning. That went fast. In the following months I watched them leave Cooley and start their own firm. I wasn’t brave enough to follow until that summer.
June 2015: I gave notice to Cooley. My wife and I started preparing to sell our house. We had decided we needed to downsize our lifestyle to match our soon-to-be-reduced income.
July 8, 2015: This was my very first morning doing work as a solo. I did 1 ½ hours of billable work before breakfast and thought, “Hmm, this might actually work.”
August 2015: I moved my family to Utah where we rented a very humble (and mouse infested) home. Our youngest child was 14 months old at the time. I started teaching tax and accounting at Utah Valley University. I took the teaching job primarily so we would have health insurance.
December 2015: I ended the first calendar year with about $40,000 in collected fees. Fairly modest but the client base was growing which gave me hope. And between the law firm and teaching 15 credits a semester I was as busy as I had ever been.
Sometime in this time period Evan Kastner went to lunch with Billy Murphy and had the generosity to say, “You guys need a tax lawyer? You should use Mike Baker, he’s great!” Then, as legend has it, Billy went to lunch with Sandy Griffin, who went to lunch with Thomas Queen. These friendships which started almost 10 years ago remain to this day.
July 2016: Embracing the ability to work remotely my wife and I flew to Florida and drove up the eastern seaboard starting in Titusville. We had just left St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, when my wife realized that she had forgotten her purse at the restaurant where we had eaten dinner. We turned around and drove back just as the sun was setting over the marsh, the live oaks with their hanging Spanish moss in the background. We fell in love.
2016-2018: I spent this period trying to grow my client base and fishing off our dock with my boys. You’d catch shrimp with a casting net and then use them on a hook to catch a wide variety of other fish: sheepshead, mullet, flounder, garfish. One week we caught 60 blue crabs. The day of the eclipse we netted an alligator (not one of my brightest ideas). We endured two hurricanes and I spent most of my free time chainsawing up the 20 trees on our property that had blown over. Then there was of course the 80-foot live oak that fell on our house. FEMA brought in a crane to remove that one.
April 2018: Wanting a place with a little less violent weather, my family and I moved to St. George, Utah where we currently live.
June 2018: Up until now I had operated as The Law Offices of Michael J. Baker. On June 27, Jared Verzello, an attorney at Atrium (now at Presidio), introduced me to a client as Baker Tax Law. I liked it so much I started using it the very next day.
Summer 2018: I had a call with Evan Kastner and we were discussing how I simply had too much work. “You should hire an associate”. A mental shift occurred. Up until then I thought clients were hiring me. After that I realized they would be fine hiring my team, provided they were highly-qualified.
November 2018: I hired my first part-time attorney, Bonita Hatchett-Bodle, a University of Michigan/Georgetown graduate and former K&L Gates partner.
January 2019: I launched the firm’s website and started drafting relevant content. To this day I get about a call a month from some poor soul who has missed their Section 83(b) election, googled the issue, and found my post online.
January 2020: The firm hired Elizabeth Norman from Ropes & Gray, as its first full-time employee.
September 2020: One of my proudest moments was the day Mark Hrenya, my former boss at Cooley, reached out and asked if he could join the firm. I’ve always felt that Mark’s joining added a certain legitimacy. He had been a partner at Cooley for over 16 years. As our international tax guru, Mark focuses on the US federal tax consequences of cross-border transactions.
November 2020: The firm expanded its M&A tax group by adding Joe Volk, from Baker McKenzie.
March 2021: The firm expanded its benefits practice by adding Jamison Klang, from WSGR.
December 2021: This was a big month for the firm. Seth Rabe, our state and local tax specialist joined us, filling a gap in our offerings. I also interviewed Martin de Jong on the 13th and Chase Manderino on the 14th. Little did I know that both would later end up at Baker Tax.
And so, the firm has grown. In the past two years we’ve added Emily Cummins from Proskauer/Weill, Mary Maher Lewis from Cooley/Latham, and Jessica Winn from Proskauer/Cooley. We’re currently looking for another attorney to join our M&A tax team and are searching for an international tax attorney that can transition in as Mark heads towards retirement.
Mainly I feel grateful that what started as a few hours of work on July 8, 2015, has grown into something that allows the ever-expanding team at Baker Tax to do meaningful and interesting work every day. So, a big thanks to you, our colleagues, friends, and clients!
Mike Baker is the founding partner of Baker Tax Law. He possesses a breadth and depth of experience in tax and employee benefits & compensation law that spans multiple decades. For additional information, please contact mike@mbakertaxlaw.com.