TaxProf Blog

Camilla E. Watson (Georgia)

• B.A. 1972, Converse College
• M.S. 1975, Medical University of South Carolina
• J.D. 1981, MIssissippi
• LL.M. (Taxation) 1983, N.Y.U.

I entered the field of tax law by serendipity. After graduating from college as a science major, I received a graduate degree in Microbiology and worked as a laboratory technologist for five years. At first, this was exciting and rewarding work, but as time wore on, I became bored with it and began to give thought to alternate careers. Both my grandfather and my mother had gone to law school, and although neither had graduated (my grandfather had to drop out because of the Depression, and my mother had hated it and had dropped out after a term), they both thought that even the little they had learned was a good background for a business career. I had no idea what I wanted to do in life, but I was certain that spending twelve hours a day in a lab was not it.

From my first day in law school, I loved it and in the furthermost recesses of my mind, I thought that one day I might like to teach. After law school, I returned to my home state of South Carolina and started work for a law firm in Columbia. The firm was looking for someone to do tax work and preferably, someone who would be willing to get an LLM. The prospect of a year in New York was thrilling to me after having spent most of my life in small towns. In addition, I had a close friend from law school who also was going to be in the graduate tax program at NYU. My friend was looking for a job, and I accompanied him one day to the NYU placement office. The placement director asked him a few questions and said that with his background, he might be a candidate for law teaching. She asked whether this was something he might be interested in pursuing. He said no, but I said yes, and a year later I found myself in Lubbock, Texas, teaching tax at Texas Tech.

At the end of my first year at Texas Tech, I collaborated with Michael Hoeflich, then at the University of Illinois, on a book on deferred compensation for Commerce Clearing House. He introduced me to my husband, Alan, who at the time was a University Professor at Penn Law School. After our marriage, I moved to Philadelphia and spent two very happy years at Widener Law School in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1989, we decided to leave Philadelphia and return to the South, so Alan and I both joined the law faculty at the University of Georgia, where I teach courses in Federal Income Tax, Timing Concepts of Federal Income Tax, Tax Practice and Procedure, Criminal Law, and Tax Crimes.

I have recently completed a casebook, published by Thomson/West on Tax Practice and Procedure and currently am at work on the Nutshell, which will track the casebook. I find law teaching in general and tax in particular very rewarding and consider myself extremely fortunate to be in this profession.

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