Esther Mulder ’14 did not always dream of law school.
In fact, as the future Harvard Law School alumna was growing up in foster care, all she knew for certain was that she wanted to spend her life helping others. “Because of my background, I’ve always had a sense that the purpose of life is not to just pursue my own self-interest,” she says. “I knew I had to do some good in the world.”
After high school, Mulder attended Gustavus Adolphus College in southern Minnesota on a full scholarship, emerging with a degree in political science and a close-knit community of friends. Eager to make an impact, Mulder joined Teach for America.
For three years, she taught social studies and reading at a low-income middle school in Jacksonville, Florida, where she also coached swimming and volleyball. Helping young students was rewarding and exhilarating, says Mulder, but as an introvert, she also found it draining. Soon enough, she realized that teaching was not what she wanted to do long-term — and that she needed to plan her next career move.
The attraction to law school for me was that it seemed like a way to address systemic issues that I saw lead into injustice.
“Up to that point in my life, I had never really considered grad school as an option for me, partly because I didn’t know know how finances would work out, and partly because I didn’t know what I would want to do,” she says. “Being around the cohort of people at Teach for America, they all had plans for what was next in their...
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