From the beginning I loved to read, and I liked to write and, to some extent, to talk to people, you know in terms of talking in front of them – to some extent. The law is such a part of history and I’m a history buff. I believe that you learn a lot of lessons from history and you do from legal history as well. So all those things came together. And people joke every once in a while and they say – certain parents say to their kids, “I want you to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an accountant. And I understand you can’t be a doctor if you can’t stand the sight of blood, so choose one of the others.” It never happened to me. I never really had the interest in medicine nor the background or interest in accounting. So I sort of went down that path.

My father was a chemist and we only had remote relatives who actually were lawyers. I didn’t know much of what they did. I didn’t go to court with them or anything else like that. So I would say it was inevitable. And I would add, once I decided to go to law school – I was married, so I was relatively serious – I was on a path to do the best I could, and I found law school very, very interesting, informative, and challenging. I was very fortunate and I did well in law school, so the world was open to me.

I joined student-faculty committees. I was appointed by the dean of the law school to help select the next dean, and that was unheard of for a student to be on that kind of committee. The chairman was Edward Bennett Williams, so it gives you an idea of the kind of people that were involved in that. These were all experiences that fortified my idea. Often, when I go to speak and I’m talking informally with students who are a little bit depressed at the beginning of law school, I said, “Give it time. Let it wash over you. You’re gonna find there’s a great history to the law and there is a great future for you somewhere.”

And that’s what I’ve tried to do. I mean Watergate came out of the blue. Randy came out of an elevator. These kinds of things still happen to me. I met my new partners when they attended one of my seminars in Florida, and now we’re becoming a national firm including the Floridians. So everything really went well for me and I just – I want the students not to be so depressed that they don’t pay attention to opportunities.