Lawyers in the US (though not much of the rest of the English-speaking world) have a "doctorate" because American lawyers got tired of physicians having a professional doctorate while lawyers only had a bachelor's degree, which is how the LL.B. (Bachelor of Laws) got transformed into the JD (Juris Doctor) -- a legacy of that is that the LL.M. (Master of Laws) is a post-JD degree, reversing the usual order of Masters vs. Doctorate degrees (and beyond that is the DJS/SJD -- Doctor of Juridical Science.)