L & C News

A Q&A with our newest colleague

Alistair D. "Sandy" Christopher recently joined L&C as an associate. We thought his background and career progression — from journalism to law — would be interesting to our website visitors.

Where are you from, Sandy?

I grew up in Connecticut, near New Haven, went to high school in Rhode Island, back to New Haven to attend Yale, and, after a few years in New York, came to Boston for law school. So I've been in New England almost my whole life.

Did you train for journalism at Yale? Or did you not know what you were heading toward?

I didn't know what I was heading toward. I wrote some columns for the alumni magazine at Yale while I was a student there, and enjoyed that. And I interned at Time magazine one summer during college, writing for their business section. Come to think of it, I actually wrote a funny, short article about one-second advertisements involving a personal injury lawyer.

I should say that both of my parents were journalists. My father was an editor at Time and Newsweek, and wrote a couple of books. My mom worked at the New York Times and for a couple of magazines. So maybe journalism was in my blood.

And after Yale, you decided to pursue it?

Yes, I worked in New York as a journalist for a few years. I graduated from college in '99, and the Internet craze was still at its peak, so I wrote primarily about venture capital and private equity. I met and talked with a bunch of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, and learned a lot about companies. It was a really educational time for me.

The more I engaged in business journalism, the more I found myself talking with lawyers who worked in that space, and I was interested in what they did, and how they were involved in the entrepreneurial process.

Here's where I should say that both of my grandparents on my mom's side were lawyers. Genetics again. [Laughs] I had always been interested in what they had done, too. So I think that helped push me to go to law school.

What was it about the lawyers' work in the venture field that you found interesting?

I could see how they were moving deals forward, and getting things done. There was a real intellectual aspect to it, as well, which was intriguing to me.

Why Boston College Law School? You always wanted to move to Boston?

Well, I was choosing between BC and schools in other parts of the country, and I thought I'd be more comfortable in Boston. And BC turned out to be a terrific school. I took a bunch of tax classes from a professor there who's a terrific teacher and an authority in his field. And as it turned out, that was a great foundation.

Were you already thinking about a tax specialty?

Not really. I also took courses in general corporate law, security law, and trusts and estates.

Which again worked out pretty well, because a lot of the planning that we do here at L&C is not just run-of-the-mill estate planning. For example, if you're doing planning for a client who owns a closely held business, their planning is really bound up with the business that they've built. So you need to know some securities law. You need to know some corporate law. You need to be able to do a range of things to keep everything moving forward.

So let's graduate you and have you think about where you want to start your law career. You're looking at different kinds of law firms: big, little, local, far away, specializing in —

I briefly was at a big firm in Boston, doing corporate law, and it became clear to me that that wasn't a particularly good fit. I decided that I wanted to go into tax and estate planning, so I moved to a biggish firm in Connecticut, with offices in Europe, the U.S., and Asia.

But we wanted to move back to Boston —

"We," as in you and your —

My wife and I. I'm married four years now. And we just had our first baby about six months ago. But well before the baby arrived, we were thinking about where we wanted to raise our kids. We missed Boston — it's just a really interesting place — and we wanted to come back.

Then it became a matter of finding the right professional setting. I wanted a firm where tax planning and estate planning were the real focus. In some firms, taxation and private client work are viewed as service departments, and it was important for me to find a place where that wasn't the case — where what I was interested in was really valued.

I came here, and met with the partners. And it became clear that they took great pride in their work, and they focused on taxation and private client work.

And finally, it just seemed like a very comfortable place. Many of the people at the firm had been here for a long time, and that only happens when you like the work that you do, and you like the people that you work with. I've found that I'm most successful in an environment where everyone is happy to be there, and feels good about what they do.

Any surprises?

Well, it wasn't exactly a surprise, but because this is a smaller firm, I'm already doing things within the world of tax that I wouldn't necessarily have gotten to do in a bigger firm. I've been pushed to learn some new areas, and deal with some transactions, and master some new issues that I had never seen before. So that's exciting.

Your bio refers to "intentionally defective grantor trusts." Are those good things?

It's a good planning technique with a terrible name. Simply put, it's a way in which you create a trust so that you, as the grantor of the trust, are responsible for the trust's taxes. And that's good, because you've accomplished a few things: First, you've gotten some assets out of your estate, so you're passing wealth down to another generation. And while this is a completed gift for gift tax purposes, for income tax purposes, you still own those assets. So every year, as you pay the tax on those assets, you're effectively making another tax-free gift to the trust. This can help — for example — a small business owner transfer ownership of his business to the next generation.

Last question: outside interests?

I'm a big sports fan. I grew up playing hockey, so I still try to skate when I can.

And not so successfully, I am trying to learn Italian. My wife grew up in Rome. And well in advance of our son ever being born, my father-in-law made it clear that he thought it would be great if his grandkids could speak Italian. So I'm working at that. I remain optimistic.