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
How David C. Hilliard Got the Jacksonville Jaguars to Change Their Logo
The intellectual property lawyer at Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson is not afraid to litigateHow did your parents react to the news that you were going to law school? They were delighted. They thought, on the other hand, that going to Chicago probably was a sign that I was leaving civilization. Where was civilization? We lived in Boston, in the suburbs. It was a peaceful, small-town atmosphere. And after landing your J.D. at the University of Chicago Law School, there was a stint in the Navy? Yes, I was judge advocate for Adm. [John S.] McCain, the father of the …
Building Excitement
It’s not quite Disneyland, but Dayton real estate attorney Alan B. Schaeffer’s current project is one of a kindYour grandfather started Pickrel, Schaeffer and Ebeling; your father managed it after him. Was it just assumed that you, too, would become a lawyer? There was absolutely no pressure put on me to go into law, but from the time I was a little kid, Saturday mornings were regular work days in the legal community. So in the ’50s, I was down at my father’s office all the time on Saturday mornings—probably, from his perspective, bothering him. He had me do various errands, help file, things of …
Kathleen Evans
The 2010 president of the state bar practices estate law out of a charming old house in Salem with her husband, daughter and dog close at hand. She defines her career on her own termsYou were the first in your family to attend college, is that right? Right. My mother was a nurse, but in those days they went through a program that was connected to a hospital. So she had some higher education, but she really wanted me to have a college degree. My mother was wonderful, still is, very supportive. I also remember sitting in a high school psychology class and the teacher talking about how one moves forward in life. Bottom line: To achieve your financial goals in life, you either …
One Lawyer, Broad Horizons
David Allen is involved with everything from corporate finance to hunger awarenessNew Hampshire isn’t known for having an abundance of large companies. So what’s a corporate finance guru like David Allen doing in Manchester? Loving it. “New Hampshire really is a small-business economy, and working with entrepreneurs—people who are just getting established—really appealed to me,” says Allen, who handles venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, and securities law at Sheehan Phinney Bass + Green. “A lot of those people I really admire and like to work with. …
‘If You Run Big, Dangerous Things, You Have an Obligation to Run Them Safely’
The philosophy of Constellation Energy’s Charles BerardescoWhen Charles A. Berardesco was 8, his uncle already had a fix on his career path. “One day, I must have been jabbering—we ate dinner every Sunday at my father’s family’s house, an Italian get-together,” says Berardesco, who still looks forward to platters of macaroni and sausage when he visits his parents. “[Uncle Roy] finally looked at me and said, ‘Boy, you talk a lot; you’ll probably turn out to be a lawyer.’… I thought, ‘OK, that sounds good, I’ll be a lawyer.’ As …
Manhattan Transfer
Real estate lawyer David Alan Richards transfers everything from Kipling books to airOn his 21st birthday, David Alan Richards opened a card from his parents and read Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If,” promising heady rewards for young men of impeccable character: Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it/And—which is more—you’ll be a Man my son! Forty-three years later, Richards may not have had everything in the Earth, but he did have a Kipling collection valued at $1.5 million. “Most people cannot believe that a book collection can be worth that much,” says …
The Ride of a Lifetime
Through nearly four decades of litigation, Jon Muth says it’s the people along the way who countWhat drew you to law in the first place? I had it pretty firmly in my mind by the time I was in ninth grade, and in part for all the wrong reasons. I had an aunt and uncle who were intellectual property lawyers, with a very successful practice in Washington, D.C. My aunt at one time was the No. 2 person at the patent office in charge of trademarks and copyrights. My uncle was one of the best chemical patent trial lawyers in the world. I kind of liked their lifestyle. They had a nice house, they …
Dianne Jay Weaver, Weaver & Weaver, P.A., Jacksonville
How Weaver went from being called “The Skirt” to landing nearly twenty $1 million-plus verdicts. No one’s snickering nowHow did you become interested in law in the first place? When I was 13 or 14, the grandfather of my best friend in junior high was a premier trial lawyer. On breaks, my friend and I used to go and watch some of his cases. I watched him take the jury from being totally indifferent to just looking at him whenever something happened to see if he approved or disapproved. It was so fascinating to see this happen. I went home and told my parents, “I’m going to be a trial lawyer.” And …
Q&A With Charlie Wiggins, Wiggins & Masters, Bainbridge Island
How a ‘military brat’ ended up setting his sights on the state Supreme CourtYou grew up in a military family, right? What was that like? Have you ever seen the movie Brats? It’s a great portrait of growing up in the military. One of the interviewees says, basically, family was very important to my dad, but it was very apparent to everybody that the military had first priority. I think that is one of the major influences of growing up in the military: It gives you this sense that service is important, and service becomes just a huge part of your life. That’s not to …
Q&A With J. Alan Jensen
J. Alan Jensen is firmwide chairman of Holland & Knight’s family business group. He is a father of seven, an animal lover and a marathon runner who practices estate, tax and family business law at the firm’s Portland office. Did you always want to be a lawyer? I was sent to college with the assignment to become a doctor but developed a hearty dislike for zoology. My father and grandfather were both dentists, so they just assumed I would become one. Law was not a highly regarded …
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