Reese Witherspoon stars as a seemingly vapid sorority girl who, after being dumped by her boyfriend, tries to win him back by following him to law school. Witherspoon’s character, Elle Woods, is at first looked down upon by her far more serious and legally minded classmates. However, she eventually wins them over and even secures the acquittal of Brooke Taylor Windham, a fitness instructor accused of murdering her wealthy husband.

Scene: The trial is not going well for the fitness instructor. It seems almost certain that she will be convicted, especially after the prosecution’s star witness, the decedent’s teenage daughter, Chutney Windham, testifies that she was in the shower washing her hair when the fatal shot was fired and discovered Brooke standing over her father’s body when she came downstairs. But then Brooke surprises everyone by firing her lawyer and announcing she wants Elle to represent her.

After a quick sidebar, Elle begins her cross-examination of Chutney. To say Elle stumbles with her initial cross-examination is an understatement. However, she eventually latches on to the seemingly inconsequential and irrelevant fact that Chutney had gotten a perm earlier that day. As Elle points out, it’s the “first cardinal rule of perm maintenance that you are forbidden to wet your hair for at least 20 hours after getting a perm.” And if Chutney has lied about this, she may very well be lying about everything else.

Lesson for lawyers: As a law professor who teaches evidence, I love using the final trial scene as a lesson for aspiring lawyers. In fact, for added humor, rather than playing a clip in class, I have three students re-enact the trial scene, with me playing the sassy judge. It’s one thing for me to explain Federal Rule of Evidence 104(b), conditional relevance, in the abstract. It’s another thing for students to realize they’ve seen Rule 104(b) played out in one of their favorite movies.

So I use the movie to illustrate 104(b). Or at least that’s what I tell my students. What I don’t tell them, but hope to convey, is that it also contains many other lessons: That few of us are born great lawyers. Like Elle, many new lawyers will stumble their first time out of the gate. But persevere. Never give up. And lastly—this is a shoutout to the Luke Wilson character—when you’ve mastered something, mentor those after you.

—Bennett Capers