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Earning either a JD or PhD is not for the fainthearted. Earning both is more than simply double the challenge.
We recently spoke with two generations of LawCats who earned both their JDs and doctorates at the University of Arizona.
While there are parallels between the career paths of father-daughter duo John Taylor (MA ’74, JD ’78, PhD ’81) and Claire Taylor (JD ’16, PhD ’22) – Claire even worked for her father’s law firm before law school – they have taken their remarkable educational backgrounds in different directions.
Parallel backgrounds
John and Claire both completed their undergraduate degrees at California State University in Chico. While at Chico State, John took classes from Michele Shover, a University of Arizona alumna and the first female member of Chico State’s political science faculty. Shover suggested that John consider the University of Arizona for grad school. He took her advice in spades, earning first a Master’s in political science followed by a JD and finally a PhD.
While at University of Arizona Law, John explored the intersection between law and political science while studying with Visiting Professor Norman Williams, the former chief of New York City’s Master Planning Department. After law school, he taught political science for a time at San Diego State University before joining a major Sacramento law firm. A few years later, John founded his own boutique law firm specializing in land use, which is now Taylor & Wiley.
Before she came to the University of Arizona, Claire worked in cybersecurity for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration laboratory. She became interested not only in cybersecurity issues, but also the intellectual property issues that arise at a publicly funded research laboratory.
This interest led her first to earn a JD and then a PhD in Computer Science, both at the University of Arizona. During law school, she particularly enjoyed classes in cyber law with Professor Derek Bambauer as well as classes exploring the intersection of privacy and intellectual property with Professor Jane Bambauer. She completed her computer science dissertation on the topic of software reverse engineering – a subject that deeply involves intellectual property and cyber law issues – under the supervision of Christian Collberg, a computer science professor who has collaborated with Derek Bambauer on research.
After completing her PhD, Claire returned to Lawrence Livermore, where she now works primarily in cybersecurity research.
Claire and John say it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Claire would follow John’s footsteps to Tucson. “I looked at plenty of other schools and applied and got in to a bunch of other law schools when I was looking, but I just thought that University of Arizona Law matched up [best] with what I wanted to do,” says Claire.
Fatherly advice
Claire notes that University of Arizona Law helps facilitate a variety of career paths.
“My career has not been traditional. Looking at some of my classmates, a lot of them went to big firms, [but] a lot of them went and did other things and ended up in all sorts of areas,” she says. “I don’t think that’s very typical for law schools generally, but I think in my case, it’s helped a lot having an education that doesn’t necessarily assume that career path.”
“The reality is that law overlaps with just about everything…,” John says. “There are all kinds of people out there that have law degrees that are doing things that you wouldn’t imagine.”
In his years as a mentor to Claire and her three siblings as well as other young people, John shared the following advice: “What I always told all these kids and told my own kids is, ‘Figure out what you’re interested in doing. And somehow it will lead to money. Don’t worry about the money, worry about what you’re interested in.’”
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