Paul J. Sax is a partner in the San Francisco office of the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

Mr. Sax currently is Chair of the Section of Taxation of the American Bar Association. Previously he has served as Vice Chair (Publications) and as Chair of the Committee on Standards of Tax Practice. He has been active in both of the major pronouncements affecting standards of practice and ethics for tax practitioners, as draftsman of Formal Opinion 346 governing tax shelter tax opinions, and as Chair of the Special Task Force on Formal Opinion 85-352 governing positions to be asserted in a tax return.

He is a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel, fellow of the American Bar Foundation, life sponsor of the American Tax Policy Institute, member of the American Law Institute Tax Advisory Group, editor of the Journal of Taxation, former editor-in-chief of The Tax Lawyer, and member of the Advisory Board of the NYU Tax Institute. He has been included in every edition of Best Lawyers in America and written and lectured extensively, appearing in nearly all of the national journals and institutes and most of the regional ones.

In his thirtieth year with the firm, he conducts a broad tax practice, focusing on counseling corporate clients in domestic and international tax planning, and handling large case tax audits and litigation. In prior years he served as the principal tax lawyer on the first private mortgage pool financing and the first credit card securitization, and arranged tax strategies for numerous large corporate mergers, acquisitions and restructurings. In recent years he litigated the landmark defense of offshore captive insurance subsidiaries, The Harper Group v. Commissioner, defended the pioneering attack on Dutch finance subsidiaries, Fu Investment Co. v. Commissioner, and undertook the appeals of multiemployer plan deduction cases for the grocery industry, Lucky Stores v. Commissioner and American Stores v. Commissioner.

Since 1975 he has been certified as a Specialist in Taxation Law by the California Board of Legal Specialization. He earned an LL.M. in Taxation from the New York University School of Law in 1969, a J.D. from the University of California Hastings College of the Law in 1968, and an A.B. from California State University, Sacramento in 1965.