Don’t Mess with Taxes

On this episode of Scope of Practice, Ropes & Gray asset management associate, Yoni Levy, speaks with tax associate, Colby Rogers, about life as an associate in the tax practice at the firm.

What is Scope of Practice?

A Ropes & Gray podcast series for law students and recent graduates that provides an inside look into different practice groups and the lives of attorneys in those groups at the firm.

Yoni Levy: Welcome to Scope of Practice, a podcast that opens the window for an inside look into different practice groups and the life of attorneys in those groups here at Ropes & Gray. I’m Yoni Levy, an associate in our asset management group, based in Boston. On this episode, I’m joined by Colby Rogers, an associate in our tax group, also based in Boston. Hi, Colby—how are you?

Colby Rogers: Hi, Yoni—good to talk to you.

Yoni Levy: Thanks for joining us. I think it’s an exciting opportunity for us to really take a look at a very different practice group in tax. Why don’t we start with a bit of background about who you are and how you wound up in your current practice at Ropes & Gray.

Colby Rogers: My name is Colby Rogers, like Yoni said. This is a second career for me. My first career, I started off as an auditor and a consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers out of their New York office back in 2007. It was right at the beginning of the financial crisis, so it was an interesting path. I did that for about five years and then I left public accounting and went back to law school—got my JD/MBA from Northwestern. With a JD/MBA, I knew that I wanted to do something that was at the nexus of business and law. Naturally, my wife is from the Boston area, and we kind of knew we wanted to raise a family in the Boston area. Ropes was the clear choice for me when I had an opportunity to meet folks and get to know the personality of the firm and what the practice groups were and what the work was like, so it was an easy choice for me. I started at Ropes & Gray in 2015 in the corporate group doing a lot of financial transactions, representing borrowers on large credit agreements, doing some private equity work—both buy side and sell side—and ultimately, did some securities work, which had me looking at proxy battles and then the normal ‘34 Act work that happens with securities law. But with my accounting background, my background as a CPA, my background in public accounting, it always nagged on me a bit that I wanted to try tax out. Back in 2018, I went and spoke with the head of my practice group at the time, and Elaine Murphy, who’s the head of the tax group, and wondered if the firm would be open to me trying to transition into the tax group. And it was great—it was successful. I must say, the last three years have been fantastic, and I’m really enjoying the tax group and the ways in which it’s different and the ways that the practice works.

Yoni Levy: It’s a very different background from either of the previous guests that we’ve had on. I’m sure in the tax work, there was probably a little more overlap with the corporate work, just given that I’m on the corporate side and I work with tax folks like you all the time. So, was there a lot of overlap between the type of tax work that you’re doing now and what you did on the corporate side, or you’re working on completely different tax work now?

Colby Rogers: The great part about the answer to that question is that it’s both. I think that I’ll start with how it overlaps. So certainly, when you are working in contracts and you’re understanding how a deal flow works and what it’s like working on a large team, you understand that there’s an area that you own and there’s an area that you can assist others with. But one thing that’s unique to tax is you find that it actually becomes the glue that binds a couple of different groups together. Let me give you an example. Say we’re representing a private equity fund that is buying a company. A lot of times, that private equity firm is going to borrow money, and then it’s going to separately negotiate that credit agreement with a lender. At the same time, there are going to be negotiations around purchasing a company, and a lot of times we talk about rolling over members of management. What’s great about the tax group is we’re really the only ones that are working in all three of those buckets at the same time, so we can actually help facilitate and make the deals move much faster. I think the other thing that’s interesting about tax is that it’s more than just a private equity deal. Take today, for example. Today, I have worked on real estate transactions. I’ve represented exempt organizations, including an endowment in a private foundation. I’ve been able to represent a public company, a fund that’s raising capital to make real estate investments. And so, what you find is in tax, you absolutely don’t pigeon-hole yourself—you find yourself touching probably more of a broad scope of groups within the organization, Ropes & Gray, than you do at any other group. So, what’s great is, I get to know a lot of people, like you, Yoni. I get to work with different partners, see different things, and get into different fact patterns. It’s certainly not the case that I’m ever bored—anything beyond that. You said something interesting too—you said you had a colleague who had transferred from a funds group to the litigation group. We have an excellent and thriving tax controversy practice that allows me not only to work on transactions and work with exempt organizations, but I can also represent clients in litigation related to tax controversy. So, when I say that you can quite literally do anything in the tax group, it’s true. You can do pretty much anything that the firm does, and I find that it keeps me interested and at the edge of my seat.

Yoni Levy: Fascinating. Is there a sense of a sub-specialty within tax? I think you described a variety of work that it sounds like people can do within the tax group, and then it sounded almost like you work in a really wide range of things. Is there any sense of sub-specializing within the tax group in, say, tax controversy, funds work, deal work, or the like?

Colby Rogers: I think what’s great about it is I think that you don’t have to pick any one—you can certainly pick a couple. Something that I’ve enjoyed is being able to help a fund raise a fund, and then work for that fund as they go and buy a company or do an M&A transaction because you understand the structure and you understand what came before with the fundraising—you understand the fund structure and the fund terms. So, what you’ll find is ultimately, by the time somebody’s becoming much more senior, there will be one to two areas that they spend a lot of, definitely the majority, of their time doing. But you’ll find that there’s often that one piece, that one thing that you did as a second year associate that you became a little bit of an expert in, and folks come back to you and ask you questions about it. It’s nice to have that little area of expertise. Certainly with all the changes that we’ve had in tax law, especially since 2017, I’ve found that there are associates, including myself sometimes, who have read certain areas more than anyone else because they’ve had to deal with problems or had to come up with solutions for clients in that area. So, you might get a call from a partner that you don’t work with too much, and they want to pick your brain on something—it’s certainly humbling that they’re coming to you and asking you these questions. You say, "Who am I to know these things?" But it’s really nice too to have that relationship and trust within the firm and within the group.

Yoni Levy: That was a theme that came up on prior interviews, that there really is not a rigid hierarchy where because someone’s more senior to you, they don’t value your opinion or they don’t turn to you for your advice or input. You, for example, probably remember quite strongly on the recent transaction that we worked on together with Larry, who’s a corner office partner who’s only a few years away from retirement, that he all the time would turn to us and say, "What do you think? What’s your take?" Either just because there’s a diversity of opinion and let’s get another person’s opinion, or frankly, he would recognize, "You’re closer to the document than I am—you’ve been drafting it day by day. I’m advising from a higher level, so what’s the view of the people who are more on the ground on the project?" I think that that ends up producing a better work environment for you—you feel better, you feel more valued—and also, a better work product for the client because it’s not like seniority is the only thing that trumps the day. You really work together and whoever has the best idea, that’s the idea that moves forward, which I think is really helpful.

Colby Rogers: Absolutely. Something that you see happen quite often is you’ll work with a group of folks who worked on a deal with you, and something will come up in another deal, and they’ll send you a note or give you a call and say, "I’m looking at something and I’m not quite sure if tax is implicated here. Could we just have a discussion, or could you take a quick look, and we can see if this is something we need you guys to dig in on?" That’s certainly something that tax associates, along with tax partners, will come together and they’ll look at those documents, look at those issues, and quite often, it’s nice to have our corporate colleagues have those feelers out. And that just shows that it’s a very collaborative environment, and making sure that we’re getting the best solution and the best product. It’s nice to work in a place where we trust each other and we’re looking to each other to just make our product better. That’s definitely true.

Yoni Levy: I like to joke that I promote myself basically a half a year as a tax associate for every year that I’m here. I like to say that I’m like a fourth year tax associate at this point, just given how much my work overlaps with tax work. When you talk about the tax work, I think you talked about the sub-specialties and at a high level, what the types of work are. When you tell people that you do tax work—I’ve certainly seen this happen, I don’t know if it’s ever happened to you—people seem to think that you’re some sort of tax preparer or that what you do is similar to what a CPA does. I’m curious, particularly from you, as someone who has a CPA background, and seeing what tax lawyers do on the tax side, it seems quite different from a CPA. So, maybe you could talk about a little bit of a flavor of what the substance of the kind of work that you do is, and what are you doing with the tax code and what are you not doing?

Colby Rogers: That’s a great question. You’re right—it’s not something that a lot of people appreciate the nuance there. I think one thing that’s really interesting is we get started, especially on deals and fundraisers, from a very early-on point, trying to come up with an efficient tax structure that not only maximizes return for our client, but also maximizes the after-tax return for their customers as well. What’s great is that role is hand in hand with the people who prepare the taxes for the company. So ultimately, there’s going to be an accounting firm that prepares the taxes and has to sign the returns. And what we’re doing is we’re coming up with the best way to structure something to make it best for everyone, but to do it in a way that we agree with the tax preparer is a way that’s going to work, and ultimately going to be something that, while not audit-proof, gives our client the best case that it would avoid an audit. Typically, when you’re looking at structure, you’ll have a sense of what type of investors are investing here and what are the type of returns. And so, we take a lot of that information and we think about what are the potential issues that could arise for these investors? Certainly, it involves some research sometimes. It certainly involves, particularly with tax, understanding what the most recent guidance is.

I think one interesting thing that I do as a part of my practice that I didn’t do when I was in corporate is I spend a good amount of time every day just watching the news and making sure that there’s not a development that’s going to affect my practice. So, it’s not only taking in the data points from the structure and from the deal, it’s also thinking about what’s currently in the code and the guidance that’s out there, and how that’s going to affect the structure we come up with. It’s also about what’s changing right now and today in tax law—sometimes that’s even across borders. What you’ll find is, especially during COVID, as the CARES Act and other acts came out, we were constantly having to think about, "How do we think about PPP loans in the context of this deal? How do we think about the fact that they’re allowing NOL carry-backs?" And so, you find yourself, again, on the edge of your seat because it’s always changing and it’s constantly something that you have to be on top of. So, that’s in the context of a deal what it’s like.

It’s also the case sometimes that the initial structuring will come from an accounting firm. What we do there is that sometimes we’ll have a dialogue with them and pressure-test some of the assumptions, again, doing some research and taking what we’ve learned from other clients. It’s a symbiotic relationship, and I find myself spending a lot of time talking not only to the tax preparers at my client, but also the tax preparers on the other side to get an understanding of what they’re thinking and pressure-testing their assumptions as well.

Yoni Levy: I think that was all really interesting, especially about the quickly evolving nature of the tax climate. Wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how your practice compares to others. I think you explained a bit about how it runs the gambit of types of work, but maybe you could talk a little bit about timelines, client relationships, and maybe the types of tasks that you’re doing, as compared to some of your corporate colleagues, and your interactions with clients and how those are the same or different from some of your corporate colleagues.

Colby Rogers: I think that taking from my prior life in corporate, I’ll say that I find that I’m on many more matters, client matters in tax, than I am on the corporate side, and that’s for really two reasons. One, corporate—you’re kind of the quarterback for a lot of different groups and a lot of different work streams. While tax does touch a number of work streams within a deal, it’s certainly not as broad on a given deal as our corporate colleagues, so you’ll find that you have a narrower slice. With more matters, comes a lot more organization, and we’ll find that we spend a lot more time on calls than we do just providing written advice because it’s just easier to have a dialogue. I find that I’m on the phone quite a bit during the day, talking through issues with our corporate team, problem-solving with partners and my colleagues internally in the tax group, and then blocking off that hour or two to sit down and do some research. I find that, as far as drafting is concerned, there’s so much that leads up to the drafting. By the time you get to the wordsmithing, it’s funny in a way because you already know exactly what you’re going to say. So in that way, it’s a lot like, Yoni, you taking a term sheet and turning it into an agreement. A lot of times, I’ve done the research or I understand the issue, and I know what I’m going to say.

As far as timelines are concerned, it’s interesting because tax can sometimes be the very beginning of the process, or we can come in and not know about the process until the middle or the very end. One thing that you find with the organization piece is understanding where each of your matters are in the process and what the lead time is. What you find is a great corporate associate is good at communicating those timelines, and a great tax associate is great at communicating what’s on their plate that day and that week. I find that, because Ropes & Gray, we work together so well and we collaborate so well, we are able to pull things together in a manner that’s efficient.

Yoni Levy: As tax folks get more senior and into the partnership, it becomes even harder and harder to find a time for them because of the number of matters they’re on. A good team works together and communicates well throughout. A good tax associate or tax partner, as Colby said, will say, "I can get to this, but not until tomorrow. I can get this next week," or whatever—just give a sense back so we can make sure that clients have the right sense of what the timeline is. I think to the point you raised, we all have lots of other projects going on, and one of the things you have to learn early on as a new associate is recognizing that the slice that something is on your plate will be different for each person. The more junior you are, and especially on the corporate side, the larger piece of your day or of your week that project is going to be. So, when you’re asking a partner for their attention on something or sending them something to review, it’s going to be one of many more things that’s on their plate to look at—they don’t have to do the primary drafting, but they need time to get to it. And so we, for example, on the corporate side, have to also always keep in mind that, while we’re on this fundraise and it’s taking up a primary part of our week—let’s say, the tax associate is on a ton of projects, all of which are saying, "This needs to happen today. This needs to close today or tomorrow.”—making sure that our timelines match up correctly is an important part of interaction between the groups. I think the groups in general do a good job of doing that at Ropes & Gray. In particular, my group had the benefit of sitting with the tax group in the Boston office for most of my career, which was really helpful because you could just walk down to someone’s door and knock and chat with them.

Colby Rogers: Yoni, that’s a great point on culture. Everything you’re talking about is one of the main reasons why I chose Ropes & Gray. I think that when I spoke with associates at each firm, the word that kept coming up at Ropes & Gray is "collegial," and it’s definitely the case. Being on the same floor as you or Justin, who’s now a partner, when I had a question about what was going on in a document or why your team was thinking about something a certain way, I could pop over and look through your glass and see if you were on the phone or not. I think one thing that’s nice has been, even during the pandemic, I’ve found that that’s continued. I get calls all the time. I have Zooms. We’ll say, "Let me open up my line real quick and just talk through something, if you have a moment." We all know that we’re trying to get to the best solution, so why not be efficient? So, it’s probably my favorite part about working at Ropes & Gray.

Another point too, Yoni—something that we’ve hinted around and you talk about having lots of balls in the air—one difference for me from the typical 25-year-old first-year associate is that I had a child my first year at Ropes & Gray. Olivia, at the time, was three years old—now I’ve been in the firm for a few years, and now I have three kids. One thing that I’ve found working with colleagues in the funds group, colleagues in transactional groups, we all have a tremendous respect for the time that we have with our kids. If you need 30 minutes, 45 minutes, if you want to go watch the dance recital, you want to go to the track meet, people give you the space and they trust that you’ll be gone for 45 minutes to an hour. But you know what? If you need to do that hour a little bit later in the evening, no problem. People have that trust and people have that accountability, and people understand how important times like that with your family are, and you’re given the space to do that. That’s one thing that’s kept me here, honestly, is that if I were expected to just have my head down working all the time and I couldn’t see my family, I don’t know that I would’ve stayed very long. And it seems, I don’t know if you agree, I think it’s a pretty key point with our culture, for sure.

Yoni Levy: I have to say, people are not going to believe that you have not listened to the prior episodes when recording this because this is exactly the conversation we had in the first two episodes as well. And I think it’s because it’s true, right? It’s not like there’s some sort of brainwashing campaign to tell us all to say this. I think it all fits into the same overall culture, which is that we’re all focused on doing the best job we can for the client in the most efficient way possible, in the way that’s the least painful for everyone involved: client, associate, partner, etc. We all have lives, we’re all trying to live our lives, and we’re all trying to do a good job at the same time, and that respect that people showed you just ends up perpetuating because, as soon as people show it to you, you want to show it to others. And then, you just feel like when someone is on vacation or parental leave or something, you just feel this intense sense of, "I really, really, really, really don’t want to bother this person while they are out. I am going to do everything in my power to just handle this because when I was out, no one bothered me at all." That same collegial culture feeds into what you were saying about not being embarrassed and just knocking on someone’s door when you want someone to explain something to you, or the like. There’s really just a sense of, “We’re all people. We all came into this with different experiences. And along the way, we’ve all acquired different experience.” You might be the best tax lawyer imaginable on this particular type of deal, but when this other type of deal comes up, you just haven’t done it yet, so there’s no need to even be embarrassed because we all know that our colleagues are intelligent and capable—it’s just an experience thing. And so, we all want to help each other and just get to the right place together.

Colby Rogers: I think two points from that. One, especially on the vacation—you talk to associates who have lateraled from other firms and they will tell you, "I can’t believe how much people have your back during vacation here. It blows my mind." The other point there, not only across groups, but within your own group—I have a little bit of a deal with three other associates in my group. We’ll have a "no dumb questions trust relationship," where even if it’s something you feel like you should know walking in the door here, you raise your hand and you ask the question and people say, "Oh no, that actually is a good question." You find that a lot of times, questions you have are questions other people have, and again, it goes back to the trust and the collegiality. So, I just wanted to highlight those two points.

Yoni Levy: Yes, I totally agree. Maybe to counter the point that you said about walking down to people’s offices, how do you find working across offices? Do you find that most of your work is with the Boston office or do you work across offices, and what’s that experience like?

Colby Rogers: I quite often find myself working with associates in New York, Chicago, West Coast, Asia and London, sometimes on the same deal, and it never ceases to amaze me how seamless it all works together. I think necessarily in the tax world, if you’re looking at, for example, a fund, and that fund has investors in Europe, that fund has investors from Asia, you find yourself hopping on the phone with lawyers over in those offices and talking through issues. And it’s great—it’s great to have that resource. Especially in London, I raised a fund where I had only limited partners coming in from Europe, and my colleagues over there could help translate things. I didn’t understand questions people had, and they said, "Over here, we call this that, and that this." Just little things like that make all the difference in the world. One point on working across offices, when I was pretty early on in my career, I actually spent three weeks out of the San Francisco office, doing a live negotiation with lawyers from Asia, New York, Chicago, and Boston. We all went out to our San Francisco office, and our San Francisco office essentially became a negotiating headquarter[s] between our law firm, two other law firms, and a few other parties to an agreement. So, I’ve actually had the opportunity to go work in another office for a few weeks. It’s the only time I’ve done it, but it was an incredible treat. But you’re absolutely right—I would say that I work just as often with people in New York, California, and Chicago as I do in Boston. It’s nice to have the different office, the different perspective, and get to learn all the little nuances of each office culture. For example, our San Francisco office has a very strong meme game, and so it’s fun getting to enjoy that with them as well.

Yoni Levy: I’m working as hard as I can to bring up the meme game in Boston, but it’s sometimes a one-man struggle. I think an important part to highlight without veering too far into a sales pitch here—I think there’s a big difference in culture about people using their vacation and policy of vacation. And the same thing I’ve heard of with parental leave. I would say at Ropes, I was always encouraged to take my full parental leave. I took, at the time, two months when my first son was born and three months when my second son was born. And vacation, you’re strongly encouraged to use your vacation time. Vacation, as we’ve been saying, is pretty heavily guarded in terms of not bothering you while you’re on vacation. I’ve heard from folks who’ve transferred from other firms that that’s not the case—that there are lots of places where the policy is four weeks, but you’re really not expected to use it, or the policy is two months paternity leave or X months maternity leave, but you’re expected to use less than that. That’s really not the point here—it’s part of the same culture of just collegiality, and we all have the same vacation package and we all use the same vacation package.

Colby Rogers: I think especially on leave, you bring up a great point. I’ve had two parental leaves now. I’ve got to tell you, both instances, you weren’t really sure when it was going to begin, so what you wind up finding yourself doing is getting the coverage a little bit in advance. Then, sometimes out of the blue, "We’re going to the hospital." So, you send around your notes and then your leave memo goes out. That’s it—people just take over for you.

Yoni Levy: One of the things I never thought about until I got a bit more senior and started talking to some of the partners about it is how top-down that culture is and how it stems from this firm not being an eat-what-you-kill model where they tightly track the points that you get per client, and then you have to give people points to get them to work on your matter, or whatever. It’s really, clients of the firm are clients of the firm. And, of course, they’re going to have primary contact points, but the firm is there to serve them as a whole. That culture of “we’re all working together towards something” really allows for vacations, like you’re saying, where the partners cover for each other because they don’t view it as, "I have to jealously guard this," or, "It’s not my responsibility—you deal with it." That type of culture doesn’t resonate with who people are at Ropes, which I’ve always found I like a lot.

Maybe you could tell us a little bit about the roles of associates at different seniority levels and how that compares to partners in the group—what junior associate life is like, what middle and senior associate life is like. And then, from your time in the corporate group, you can compare and contrast that a little bit to what you think those levels are like in the corporate group as well.

Colby Rogers: I think one example that is the same across is that you’ll find there are some larger teams that have a partner, a senior associate, a mid-level, and then a junior. What’s nice about it is, whenever you have that scenario, you have someone that’s nearer to you in seniority and you can have that dialogue with them. So, you can really understand that they’re not that far off—you’re going to be there very soon. This is a deal that will get you the knowledge to get to that next spot. The other piece that I like about tax is, even if you’re not on a larger deal, you’ll find that quite often, it’s just you and a partner. You’ve got the one-on-one time with somebody who, quite honestly, if they were teaching a class as a professor or if they were teaching a CLE course, it would probably cost quite a bit of money—and here, they’re a captive audience. You get to ask them questions, talk with them, and talk them through things, so it’s nice. The role early on in tax is really about learning—it’s about understanding what the problem is, understanding how to research, and understanding how to find a solution that’s easy to convey to a client. You noted this earlier, that sometimes you need the corporate team to translate. What we’re trying to do from an early stage is getting folks at the junior level to understand the economics and how tax impacts quite a bit.

At the mid-level, what you find yourself doing is getting into some really substantive work. I say mid-level, but this really can start in year two, where you’re going to be the one primarily doing the first draft of something. You’re going to be the one who’s, in some instances, getting on the phone and getting some information from the other side and having a dialogue. Certainly, there’s going to be a more senior associate partner on guiding the conversation a little bit with you, but you find yourself getting into some more substance. As you grow a little bit more senior, you get a little bit more of a leash, and you’re able to do some negotiating on your own and checking in with partners, and transitioning into that role. I think what’s nice about the tax group is, because of the breadth of the code and because of the complexity and the experience required, you’re necessarily going to have people checking your work. And so, you find yourself failing boldly in your drafting, in your research, and someone will help you see the bigger picture. It’s through that back-and-forth, that dialogue, through the drafts, that you can develop and turn into the senior associate that everyone looks up to.

Yoni Levy: Maybe you could tell us a little bit about the culture of the tax group—how you feel the tax group fits in culturally to the rest of the firm, and maybe how it’s different in some ways from the rest of the firm, and the relationships between the various members of the tax group.

Colby Rogers: It’s a great question. I think one thing about the tax group is—and this is true obviously of a lot of lawyers—I feel like we’re all very curious people. I think what’s really fun about being around a lot of curious people is that everyone has very unique hobbies, and what they do outside of work is unique and fun. And, for lack of a better term, they’ll get very excited about the things that they’re curious about. When you have a lot of curious people, you find that, like I mentioned earlier, we have these meetings every few weeks where we talk about the current topics—we call it the “current development lunch”—one of the aspects of the current development lunch is people bringing unique problems that they’re seeing in their practice. Getting a room of people together in an office and then across offices over video, and now in the pandemic over Zoom, is you get a lot of really curious people digging into the question a little bit more, and you find: "Did you ask this? Did you think about this? What about this approach? I remember there’s something about this that I read a long time ago—let me try to dig that up." So, what’s great about the culture of my practice group is it’s not your problem, it’s not your puzzle—it’s everyone’s puzzle. There are a lot of different ways to solve the issue, and we’re constantly refining it and finding the way that works commercially, the way that it should go, how people really think about this, what does that law firm think about it, and what does that accounting firm think about it? It’s really just these different approaches you find make this great mosaic of different ways to think about things. And so, because you have that curiosity, you’ll run into someone in the group where, "I’ve got my deal—I’ve got to get my deal done. Here’s my question, and the answer to my question should be yes or no, or 15 or 22. You find that folks in the tax group will say, "Wait a minute—what about this? Did you think about this? What about doing it this way? I can’t do it that way—the deal’s already almost done, and we’ve already done it this way. But that way might be a little bit better, and so maybe we want to talk to our client about that.” Sometimes you’ll hop on the phone and say, "Did you think about changing this one little piece?" And you’ll walk away with a better outcome for everyone. It’s fun to interact with the curious group with other folks, so I think that answered your question.

Yoni Levy: You did, and in a way that I actually had not particularly managed to put my finger on myself. But I think it actually, in my experience, matches the tax group quite well. I think intellectual curiosity is a really, really strong element. I think people join the tax group because they like that puzzle piece. They like thinking out the structure, and doing this raises that issue, or doing that raises this issue, and piecing that all together. I think, for example, Brett Robbins, one of the partners in the tax group who does a lot of funds work, has a weekly fund meeting where they talk about basically the intellectual aspects of fundraising, and so there are lots of current development pieces to it too. When I join that meeting, that’s where we end up discussing topics like the theory of why you pay a preferred return—I think it came up because we were trying to understand, “If you deem a distribution as made, should the press keep ticking, or should it not? Why did we do it this way and not that way?" I think that is a very apt description of the group.

I think you set yourself up a little difficulty for the next question because you said your group is so intellectually curious. They’re so curious that you all have really fascinating things that you do in your spare time, so we expect this answer to really wow us, Colby: What is it that you do in your spare time?

Colby Rogers: I think recently, it’s become camping. My family and I like to get out a little bit. We like to go camping. We bought a pop-up camper, and so we find ourselves going to all manner of places and getting out there and doing some camping. It’s fun to be able to work at a flexible firm where you might be able to leave at 3:00 p.m. on a Friday, and work from the road for a little bit and answer a few phone calls on the road, but get to a spot where you and your family can get out there in the wilderness a little bit. So, my thought space has recently been on, "What are the different camping things I need? What can I do? And how far can we go away from a campsite and still be okay with a seven-year-old, a five-year-old, and an 11-month-old?"

Yoni Levy: Oh, wow. You’re bringing the 11-month-old camping with you? That’s bold of you!

Colby Rogers: He loves it.

Yoni Levy: I’m sure. I’m just not sure I would love the whole sleeping part of that. What’s your coolest camping equipment—what’s your coolest gadget?

Colby Rogers: My favorite thing right now actually, we’ve been teaching the girls how to start fishing. They haven’t quite figured out that not everywhere there’s water, there’s fish, but we’ve certainly gone fishing in some interesting spots. We’ve been enjoying that as of late.

Yoni Levy: Sometimes that’s better though. My now five-year-old, when he was four and we used to walk around, when there were puddles in the street, he would just pick up a stick and act like he was fishing in the puddle. Of course, it’s the middle of the street, so there are not going to be any fish there.

Colby Rogers: We’ve had some similar experiences. That’s exactly what I meant.

Yoni Levy: That’s great. I hope you get to enjoy many camping outings, especially later this week. Are you going anywhere fun?

Colby Rogers: Actually, yes. I’m not going camping, but we’re going to Chicago. We’re looking forward—we’re going camping next to some cranberry bogs in the fall during the cranberry harvest. We’re going to be able to camp and watch them flood the bogs and do all the harvesting, so we’re looking forward to that one.

Yoni Levy: That’s awesome. I live not far from the cranberry bogs in Foxborough, and I’ve hiked them before, but I’ve never been there for the cranberry harvest, so that sounds pretty cool. Colby, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your insights. And thank you to our listeners. We hope you found this to be helpful. If there’s a specific practice group or area you’d like us to cover in a future episode, please reach out to me directly—I’d love to hear from you. If you’re a law student or recent graduate and would like to learn more, please visit our website at ropesgrayrecruiting.com or check us out on Instagram at @ropesgray. You can subscribe to this series wherever you typically listen to podcasts, including on Apple, Google and Spotify. Please look out for future episodes and share with your friends. Thanks again for listening.