Student Spotlight: Shelby Hobohm ’27
Desmarais Law & Technology Scholar
Inaugural Student Legal Fellow, Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator
Environmental Law Society, Energy Law Chair
Social Enterprise and Start-Up Law, Co-Chair
American Constitution Society, Co-President
OUTLaw, Social Chair
Just Dicta, Co-Chair
How did you decide to pursue law?
In my freshman year of college, I wrote a paper on nuclear power plants for my engineering communications class. To my surprise, I found that the biggest barrier to advanced nuclear power technology was related to law and regulatory hurdles—not the technology itself.
Once I saw that issue in relation to nuclear power, I started running into the same problem over and over in relation to emerging technology in general. There is a disconnect between the people proposing, writing, and practicing the law and the people who understand and work with the technology. I came to law school because I wanted to learn the motivations underscoring the law, while maintaining my technical expertise. My end goal is to work in legal academia and ideally help fill the technology-related knowledge gap.
You’re pursuing a PhD in nuclear engineering. What is it like to balance two very different academic paths? How did you decide to pursue both of them?
I love interdisciplinary work, and always have. I often joke that my ideal career path would have been being a “Renaissance man.” I find immense value in being able to bring perspectives to the table that are not common to each of my separate academic disciplines. I find the balance to be very refreshing. Prior to law school, I worked full time as an engineer while pursuing my master’s and my PhD coursework. Practically, this meant that I would spend all day on technical work, and then go home and do even more technical work. Being in law school and in the dissertation research portion of my PhD means that I get to use two very different portions of my brain, letting me “take a break” from a singular way of thinking.
Honestly, I always joke that my PhD is more of a side quest because I never expected to pursue a PhD. However, when I wrapped up my master’s, I had unanswered research questions that I couldn’t stop thinking about, which ultimately led to my dissertation research. I wouldn’t change anything about my path because my experiences in both of my fields make me a stronger academic.
You're also pretty active in a number of organizations—OUTLaw, Just Dicta, the Law Revue, to name a few. How do you balance your involvement with campus organizations and classwork?
One of the things I love about law school, and NYU Law in general, is the ability we have to connect with each other in ways that are completely outside of our study of the law. OUTLaw is important to me because it provides a space for LGBTQ+ law students to be in community with each other, even while our legal rights are under attack. I started Just Dicta, the improv club, last year because I performed improv and standup comedy before law school in the Dallas area. I think improv and other forms of comedy provide invaluable skills that law students can use both professionally and personally. In law school, you often have to confront very difficult problems and situations. Having the creative outlet that Just Dicta and Law Revue provide helps me stay sane and connect with the broader community. As for balance, I mainly rely on my google calendar and my partner to help make sure that I am not overcommitted!
How does your legal education inform your education as an engineer? How does your engineering education inform your law school journey?
I find immense value in being able to bring perspectives that are not commonly found within one of my fields into the other. I think my engineering education has had a bigger impact on my law school journey than the other way around, mostly because I am at the point in my PhD where I am focused on a very specific and highly technical research question, and because right when I started law school, the world became very interested in nuclear energy. I’ve had the amazing opportunity to conduct legal research regarding the NRC’s licensing authority over advanced reactors, nuclear waste storage, and even how nuclear reactors should be regulated on the moon. My specialized technical background means that I am often able to advance arguments that other academics have a hard time identifying, which has been immensely rewarding.
Which Law School class or experience has had the biggest impact on you?
This is a really tough question. I find a lot of value in learning about a diverse range of topics, so I try to also diversify the experiences that I pursue. I think the most unexpected experience has been the ways that my coursework, technical background, and clinical work have aligned. This semester I have been taking Global Data Law, which works to discuss the diverse infrastructural and regulatory approaches to data and technology related to data. I initially was interested in the class because my dissertation research is using machine learning, but recently I have been able to directly apply what I have learned to my clinical work advising impact investment organizations in the International Transactions Clinic. Finding the ways that my research and coursework can directly connect to serving clients has been immensely valuable, and also helped me generate so many more research questions that I am interested in pursuing.
What do you most like to do outside of class? What’s your favorite way to spend a day in New York City?
My favorite thing to do outside of class is to spend time with my friends, my partner, and my two cats, Peaches and Pluto, short for Plutonium. I am also very intentional in setting aside time to do non–law school related activities, like board game nights or reading at a local cafe. My favorite way to spend a day in New York City is staying in my neighborhood in Astoria, Queens. I enjoy walking to my favorite cafe down the street, Elevenses, shopping at our local small businesses, and just being involved in the local community.
Have you read any books or heard any podcasts lately that you would recommend?
Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle is a book I read recently and really enjoyed. I think this is a very interesting time to be studying law, and even to just be in academia in general, and it can be very easy to feel nihilistic. Lucky Day, a speculative fiction/absurdist horror book, addresses nihilism head on by following a former statistics professor’s life after the occurrence of a global catastrophe called the Low-Probability Event. As someone who has been grappling a lot with existentialism, it was refreshing to read a book grappling with the same issue in a completely absurd setting. It also made me feel more hopeful about the ways that my classmates and I can approach impacting the legal industry after graduation.