Attorney Profile: Q&A with Kristen O’Connor

1. Where were you born?

Bakersfield, California.

2. Do you have activities or hobbies?

Reading classic mystery novels (I’m a huge Agatha Christie fan) or watching BBC classic mystery shows (i.e. Poirot), running, and keeping up with my brilliant and beautiful black lab, Sailor.

3. What drew you into the legal field?

My great-grandfather, grandfather, and uncle were all lawyers and later judges.  When I was a little girl, I used to sneak into my grandfather’s home office and play lawyer.  He was my hero and truly good, fair, and cerebral-the kind of Atticus Finch-lawyer that inspires great literature. Somewhere among those dusty office vestiges of his career as a lawyer and a judge my legal ambitions were born.

4. How long have you been a practicing attorney?

A little over three years.

5. What did you do prior to graduating law school?

I was a professional actor.  My undergraduate degree is in theatre and I pursued acting and modeling in Los Angeles for most of my early twenties.

6. You graduated third in your law school class and are now pursuing an LL.M. in Securities and Financial Regulation at Georgetown. What makes you a successful student and attorney?

1 Corinthians 9:24. “Run in such a way as to get the prize.”  Everyone is fungible; find a way to add value and be better so that you’re not easily replaced.

7. Do you have a bucket list? If so, what does that list include?

Write and publish a novel, drive from Maine to Connecticut during the autumn foliage, take my mother to Boston, own a house big enough to fill with lots of beautiful dogs. . .to name a few.

8. If you could time travel, where would you go? Why?

I love everything that defined popular culture in the ‘40s: the film noir, transatlantic accents, Hollywood crime dramas, and the tailored, utility clothing.  Toward that end, I would love to time travel to a jazz bar in the late ‘40s, or to the Hotel Del Coronado on the night my grandfather danced with Lana Turner in the Crown Room.  Magic.

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