About Beth Taylor
Beth Taylor has been a senior editor for Super Lawyers since 2003, and has won dozens of awards for headline-writing and editing throughout her career. Previously, she was an editor and covered courts for The Orlando Sentinel. She also worked for go2net and KIRO-TV in Seattle, where she wrote for and edited their websites. In addition, Beth edited The Kitsap Business Journal and Media Inc. Beth has written travel books, including Around Seattle With Kids for Fodor’s and Seattle Day By Day for Frommer’s, and online travel guides for Google. Her travel writing has appeared in publications including the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle. Beth has a B.A. in communications/journalism and a master’s degree in political science.
Articles written by Beth Taylor
Bette Epstein’s Estate Secrets
The Reed Smith lawyer tells why her practice area is anything but routineQ: As an estate lawyer, you must hear a lot of family squabbling. A: A lot of what [families] fight about are items of tangible personal property, which may or may not have any value. The money, the property—that’s kind of easy to divide up. But where there is one deer head, one piano, one favorite piece of art or piece of jewelry. … Jewelry disappears. There’s a lot of time spent over jewelry that has disappeared that you’ll never find again. Q: What was that about a deer …
B. Gerald Johnson: Civic Booster
The co-founder of Pacifica Law Group helped shape SeattleQ: If you hadn’t gone into law, what would you have done? A: In college, I was torn between journalism and law. I was the chairman of the daily newspaper at school and was also a stringer for The New York Times. But I also thought I would want to return to Seattle, and the opportunities for journalism, even then, were such that a career path in which I was going to be really serious about that probably led through New York or Washington, D.C., or someplace else. So it was more of a homing …
Stuart Z. Grossman V. Curacao
Bank of America, BP, and possibly the Netherlands are also on notice from the Coral Gables personal injury attorneyQ: Were you always interested in the law? A: I was the first person in my family to graduate college. I did not have some Uncle Phil or my dad to use as a role model for being a lawyer. Q: So what was the reason? A: I grew up in the ’60s era that changed the world as far as the concept of equality was concerned. I think that I honed some sense of justice then—if not in my conduct, then certainly subliminally, and just psychologically was always drawn to those stories, to movies about …
Engineering Solutions
Richard H. Steen’s mix of strengths makes him a powerhouse at the negotiating tableQ: What drew you to the law? A: One of my uncles was a lawyer—he was a law professor—and I had an interest, which really developed through high school and college, in social issues and legal issues. My undergraduate work was in engineering, which is nothing like the law, but as I got to be maybe a junior or so, my thoughts turned to staying in school, and law [was] something that interested me. I decided that I wanted to take a shot. I had a passing interest in politics as well. I thought …
When a Click Is More Than Just a Click
In the world of click-fraud investigations, Dean Gresham’s name is at the top of any search engineDean Gresham began handing out “attorney-at-law” business cards when he was 8 years old. Growing up with big plans in a little town, he drew inspiration from his uncle, a prominent maritime attorney in New York City. “It was small-town Texas,” Gresham says of his hometown of Jasper. “I always wanted to move to the city and do something important.” Three decades later, Gresham, of counsel at Payne Mitchell Law Group in Dallas, is no longer typing his own cards. At age 37, he has …
Michael T. Reagan Makes His Case
The Ottawa appellate attorney is all about the detailsQ: What do you like best about appellate law? A: I get to work with a wide variety of great lawyers. There are, most of the time, already lawyers in the case, and most of the time the cases are of some size and have sufficient interest to warrant somebody taking an appeal. I’m lucky. On the more substantive side, appellate lawyers are, in my view, part of the world of the appellate courts. Appellate lawyers are not appellate judges, but nonetheless the appellate judges and the lawyers …
The Fixer
Nothing makes estate lawyer Ruth I. Rounding madder than witnessing injustice. Colleagues at Kohnen & Patton say (good-naturedly) that her middle initial stands for “Irate”Q: When you started practicing, was the reality different from what you had envisioned? A: I think what’s different is that you can’t just yell and say, “Look, here are all my facts; this has to be fixed; this is the way it is; I’m right.” You have to be more subtle and compromise … build a case and think about what case the other side has, and maybe think about it from their point of view. The judge has to justify his decision or the IRS agent has to make his numbers or the …
The Spartan Way
Michigan State’s many legal clinics assist residents all over the stateFew states have been hit as hard by the economic downswing as Michigan. That’s why the helping hand extended by Michigan State University College of Law students, through an impressive assortment of legal clinics and outreach programs, is particularly welcomed by the community. “We’re just kind of at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of economic prosperity,” says Michele LaForest Halloran, director of the law school’s clinical programs, of her home state. “We’ve had huge …
Act 10, Scene 1
Lester Pines and Tamara Packard were ringside during the Madison protestsWhen Gov. Scott Walker rolled out his union-busting plan earlier this year, protesters descended on the state Capitol as the country watched the drama unfold on TV. Lester Pines and Tamara Packard just looked out their window. “It was really amazing,” recalls Packard, who, along with Pines, is a litigator at Cullen Weston Pines & Bach (CWPB). “Both of our offices face the Capitol, so, especially during that really intense period where there were demonstrations going on all day, every …
Man of Science
From Coast Guard icebreakers to hydroelectric projects, Don Haagensen, with Cable Huston Benedict Haagensen & Lloyd, takes on knotty problemsQ: I understand law was actually your second career choice? A: During my junior year at college, [I] took a government civil service exam. The form came back and it said: You’ve qualified for these kinds of jobs, and where would you like to work? At that time I was going to college in Idaho, so I checked everywhere … except Idaho. [There were] two positions working for the United States Coast Guard in their oceanographic unit in Washington, D.C. for the summer, and part of your summer would …
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