A couple of years ago, my wife, Erica, and I were getting our daughter ready for school and an image of President [Barack] Obama was on one of the morning shows. And I said, oh, look, Carina, there's the president. You can be president one day. And she said, right away, that's for boys. And so right away I said, oh, no, you can be a doctor. You can be a lawyer. You can be anything you want. You can be president.
I feel for young people today. When I came out of law school, yes, we were broke, we had kids, we had problems. But it was straightforward. I didn't have to say, "My God, I am $80,000 in debt, I have to get a job, I have to pay it back, my life is ruined otherwise." We were able to go forward and work toward building something new, and that's what we did. Today many lawyers are unable to feel free to be advocates.
One of the things I know about my family, my generation, and my ethic background is that we put in work and I'm not just talking about just to eat. You have to think about the civil rights movement, they were putting in work; marching, walking miles and miles, sacrificing, getting on the bus, feeding one another, they had schools, voter registration, they were working! They were hard workers so my advice is to work.