Abstract
I. Introduction It's 1982; I'm a twenty-one-year-old junior in college with no definite plans beyond graduation. Maybe I should think about graduate school or law school. I attend a law school information session and learn that the only requirements for law school are having an undergraduate degree in any field and taking the LSAT. This seems like a possibility because I will have the degree in a year, and how bad can the LSAT be? One slight problem - I have no idea what lawyers do. I have seen them on television and in movies. I know the state district court judge in my small hometown because his son was in my high school class, but most of the people in my family are teachers. Luckily, ignorance does not usually stop twenty-one-year-olds, and it did not stop me. I applied and was accepted to law school, attended, worked as a law clerk for the county attorney and a large law firm, clerked for a judge, passed the bar exam, and then began practicing in a field that I knew virtually nothing about. The best thing that happened to me to shape my legal career was my discovery of a mentor who has guided me from the time I signed up to take the LSAT. By most predictors, our mentoring relationship was destined for failure. He is male; I am female. He is only three years older than me. He has a passionate personality; I tend to be ...