Law Students Volunteer to Help Area Residents File Their Taxes

Student volunteers include, clockwise, from left: Joe Martin, Patrick Micu, Megan Gregory, Rosamaria Cavalho, and Anastasia Gomez.

As April’s national filing tax deadline grows closer, UC Law SF law students are doing their part to assist low-income taxpayers.

From greeting clients, answering questions, and helping them fill out tax returns, Hastings’ students work with lower-income taxpayers in the San Francisco area as part of the VITA program, which the school has participated in for over a decade.

The VITA program assists local taxpayers with their federal and California state income tax returns at no cost to the client. Hastings law students also assist them with verifying their information, including sources of income, dependent status, and other information. Their work is overseen by UC Law SF Professor Amy Spivey.

“Our main job is aiding the tax preparers and quality reviewers with substantive tax law questions, or with issues they face using the tax software,” said student Patrick Micu ‘23, a student site coordinator overseeing the VITA program. “We also play the roles of greeters, tax preparers, and quality reviewers when circumstances call for it and will oversee the final stages of each tax return.”

Organizers say the program gives law students hands-on experience helping vulnerable clients who do not have resources to pay for tax preparation services, while also learning some basic tax law. “Students learn important and transferrable skills participating in VITA, including client interviewing and counseling, legal research, and practical application of the law in preparing the returns,” said Spivey.  “Students this semester have really appreciated the opportunity to meet face-to-face with clients, a first for many students due to the pandemic.”

The UC Law SF VITA program was listed as one of the sources for tax help in the San Francisco area.

Participating students say not only do they feel good about helping the clients, but it gives them valuable experience for their future legal careers, “It has helped me find a tax-oriented summer internship for both 2021 and 2022,” said Micu. “It was the most talked about portion of my resume in all of my interviews.”

“VITA was a fantastic opportunity for me, especially as a first year, to gain hands-on experience of working directly with clients and discussing complicated legal matters with people who don’t have a legal background,” added Megan Gregory ‘23, another student site coordinator for VITA. “It helped me learn how to prioritize my questions and focus on what really matters for the issue at hand.”

Micu and Gregory have worked as the site coordinators for the VITA project at Hastings this year, after participating in the virtual VITA program in Spring 2021. That means they train other student volunteers and get the word out to student organizations and others about this experiential learning opportunity.

Both students said volunteering with the tax program has helped them prepare for their legal careers. “In addition to giving students an opportunity to get a taste of what practice is like, the experiential learning courses at Hastings develop students’ ability to deal with real-life issues and problems that lawyers face on a day-to-day basis,” Micu said. Gregory added, “From the experiential tax programs, I have learned a lot about my own values, both personal and professional, and it has clarified what kind of work I want to be doing and what type of environment I want to be doing it in. “