fixed point - Are SOS structures better for linear phase FIR filters?

I've seen many discussions suggesting that SOS's are often/usually the preferred structure for fixed point hardware filter implementations, since they preserve conjugate pairs, etc., but I've never seen any specific arguments explaining why they are better for FIR filters.

Do these advantages still apply for direct form, linear phase FIR filters which allow the number of multipliers to be reduced by a factor of 2?

Finally, are there any good resources discussing these trade-offs? I'm trying to implement fairly long FIR filters with small multipliers, i.e. 40+ taps with 8-10b coefficients, and am looking for resources that might shorten this effort.