HLS alumna is the "dopest lawyer"

The real Elle Woods:

She studied relentlessly to achieve at Beverly Hills High, and the payoff was Columbia University in New York, where she said she "just felt the vibes" and fit in.

At Columbia she pulled seven-hour study stretches on Saturdays and Sundays, was an editor on the college newspaper and taught a political science class.

That helped when she applied to Harvard Law School, although her application essay was risky. She argued that drugs should be legalized, a position her father warned would doom her chance of admission.

She was admitted anyway.

Once there, "I was like the most eccentric person," she said. She remembered feeling like a neon sign in a bright yellow vest and tinted glasses in the classrooms.

"I studied a lot, and I didn't lie about it, and people would make fun of me for it," she said. "People at Harvard pretended they didn't have to work because they were geniuses. "

She pursed her lips sideways and fiddled with a strand of hair. "They called me the Dirty Librarian because I swore and wore glasses."

She said she was not intimidated by some of the bullying law professors because her mother's boyfriends over the years had made her used to nasty lawyers.

The title of her law school thesis was "The Right to Get High."

She passed the bar on the first try: "It was like a miracle," she said.