Walsh’s leap will only strengthen the growing feeling among top-tier legal minds with glittering CVs that corporate defense law is not their only option, said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a plaintiffs law scholar at Stanford University who is also friends with Walsh.

Engstrom quoted a 1905 statement by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “The leaders of the Bar … have, with rare exceptions, been ranged on the side of the corporations, and the people have been represented, in the main, by men of very meagre legal ability.”

The stinging generalization — and the gender assumption — haven’t been so baldly true in a while, but an imbalance has persisted, Engstrom said.

“Many follow this path without carefully considering the alternative,” she said. “That, I think, is very slowly changing, and the change is long overdue. Seen through this lens, Alex’s career evolution is a small part of a much broader story.”