‘Legally Blonde’ is making the case 20 years later
The Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy has inspired women to become lawyers.
When lawyer Sigrid Boggan was in her early teens, she was first introduced to a movie about a blonde, pink-clad sorority girl-turned-Harvard Law student.
Now 30 and a graduate of Howard University and Georgetown University’s law programs, Boggan looks back fondly on “Legally Blonde,” her favorite movie that first introduced her to the field she now works in and inspired her Instagram handle (@the_black_ellewoods) – not to mention the pink blazer she often wore to class.
“She’s not what you think of when you think of an attorney,” Boggan says of the movie’s main character, Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon). “You think super smart, boring, serious, but Elle is just a regular person. You trust her … she’s one of us.”
Twenty years after it first hit theaters, “Legally Blonde” has inspired a generation of law students to be unapologetically themselves in a field that hasn’t always celebrated individuality.
When it opened on July 13, 2001, audiences saw a fun rom-com with a poignant message. Elle, a fashion-loving sorority president, chases her exboyfriend Warner (Matthew Davis) to Harvard Law School, hoping to win him back. But after being repeatedly told she isn’t smart enough or doesn’t have the right look for a serious profession like law, Elle buckles down and discovers a real love and knack for defending those who need her help.
“I was like, this girl is so amazing: She’s just super popular, and super pretty, super girly. But she’s super smart as well,” Boggan recalls of her first “Legally Blonde” viewing experience. “I have that same type of mind-set, (where) if someone tells me I can’t do something, it’s gonna make me go harder at doing it. And so I just instantly loved it.”
To Stacey Menjivar, a 29-year-old rising third-year law student at Harvard and co-vice president of the school’s Women’s Law Association, one of the highlights of “Legally Blonde” is the way it promotes the idea of evoking passion in the legal field.
“You don’t have to fall into these buckets of very serious people who have political goals in order to be a lawyer – you can be passionate and want to help people on a less grand scale and still be incredibly successful lawyer,” she says. “If we get past that stereotype, so many more people will be able to see themselves having a place in the legal profession.”
Despite a more equal playing field for women compared with 20 years ago (Harvard Law reports 49% of its class of 2023 is female, and overall 54% of students at American Bar Association-approved law schools are women, according to a 2021 study), imposter syndrome still can persist. To combat this, Menjivar channels a secret weapon: “The confidence of a mediocre man.” (Think Warner walking around like he owns Harvard despite needing his father to help him get into the school in the first place.)
“I find myself to be hypercritical of my statements in the classroom,” Menjivar says. “You don’t want to say the wrong thing in front of your entire section or your entire lecture, but somehow it always seems that men don’t have that same issue. Just having a confidence of a mediocre man (is) pretty much what gets me to participate and to really show up in the classroom in a way that I feel that I’m contributing and also learning.”
How similar is Harvard Law School in 2021 compared with the fictitious 2001 version? Not quite the collection of “boring and ugly and serious” people depicted in the movie, Menjivar says.
“Law school classrooms, while very competitive, are definitely a lot more cordial than how they’re portrayed in the movie,” she adds. “Especially in my experience, female law students tend to support one another rather than tear each other down.”
When Boggan won the title of best advocate for her school’s moot court competition a few years ago, she had a certain fictional law student in the back of her mind.
“Out of all of the people who tried out, I was considered to be No. 1,” she said. “I was channeling Elle Woods in my performance: Someone who’s super confident, and you just go in with your intuition and saying what you think. And I actually did pretty well.”
In the grand scheme of things, Menjivar doesn’t see “Legally Blonde” as the best reflection of what her school looks like today. But she and her classmates can appreciate the nod to their community – she’s seen some feathery pink pens like the one Elle used in class and Instagram captions on campus with the caption “What, like it’s hard?” – and how the movie exemplifies some issues that still plague law schools and the industry as a whole.
Elle Woods faced discrimination for being a woman, which Menjivar notes had been a major issue in law. As women become more prevalent in the profession, it opens the door for “other communities that have been historically excluded (to also try) to break through these barriers,” she says.
If they could change anything in the original “Legally Blonde” film, Boggan and Menjivar agree it would be updating the heavily white cast to be more diverse. A threequel starring Witherspoon and written by Mindy Kaling was announced last year, which presents the chance to update “Blonde” to more accurately reflect the the world it portrays.
Still, “everyone has a little bit of Elle in them,” Boggan adds. “Although (Elle) isn’t Black, I definitely see some characteristics of herself in me. I don’t think that you necessarily have to be of the same race to be inspired, motivated, or see yourself in a character.”
“It’s about wanting and having a goal, working your butt off to get there, even if it seems unachievable. I feel like every girl has had a guy like Warner where you’re just never going to be good enough, you know? And it turns out, it’s not that she wasn’t good enough – she was too good for him. That just inspires me so much.”