Work Text:
She's ironing out the wording of her response to the LAPD offer when her phone pings - one new message on her student account.
MENTOR MATCH! says the subject line. The sender photo is a crew cut and a grin with a bland array of facial features in between. Lana sighs. Clark's a good fit for VP of the student bar association -- everyone likes him, at least partly because everyone knows who his daddy is – but the boy does absolutely everything at 110% intensity.
She minimizes ten tabs of salary research and clicks through to Outlook.
Hey there 3Ls!
Thank you for volunteering for the law school mentorship program! I know you have a lot on your plate this fall – hope the job search is going well :)
It's been seven hours since Ema woke her by jumping into her bed and landing on her lower back. Lana fishes the acetaminophen out of the side pocket of her briefcase and dry-swallows two. She scrolls rapidly to the bottom of the email.
Your Mentor Match is:
Mia Fey 🏵️
“Huh.”
The name is ringing a bell. Which is odd, because she tries her best to stay far away from the 1Ls and their doom cloud. She isn't even on campus that often these days.
She texts the provided number a link to her scheduler and goes to pick Ema up from school.
Lana ends up ordering whipped cream on her macchiato, even though it might give the 1L the wrong impression about what's necessary to succeed as a woman in law. She's staring down at her drink, debating whether to make horrible straw noises or risk an undignified foam mustache, when a shadow falls across the booth. The shadow is wearing a formal robe, a dowdy haircut, and a double necklace situation that makes it hard not to stare at her incredible cleavage.
This woman appeared in her life three weeks ago in the back row of Arakawa's seminar. Lana had instantly concluded: (i) this woman was an exchange student, (ii) she was flat broke, and (iii) she couldn't be lower than a Kinsey 4.
“You're Lana, right? I'm Mia,” says her mentee.
Lana nods and gestures to the bench across from her. Mia slides in, the silk of her robes shushing against the pleather seat.
Giving in to the inevitability of indignity, Lana takes a noisy pull of her drink. “Why are you in CliRep? You don't have the prerequisites.”
“Mr. Grossberg recommended that I take Ethical Issues in Client Representation as soon as possible in order to better assist him.” Mia tilts her head, taps one finger against her chin. It's charming. “I think he pulled some strings with Professor Arakawa, but neither of them will answer my questions directly. I'm only shadowing, so I suspect I'm not on the official roster.”
Lana frowns. “You're at twenty credits and you're working at one of the busiest criminal defense firms in the metro area. How are you upright?”
Mia raps her plastic cup with a nail and grins at her. “There's three shots of espresso in this thing.”
Twenty minutes later Mia's phone pings – some kind of family emergency. “I'm so sorry, I have to hop on a call. Let's catch up again soon,” she throws over her shoulder, already stalking out of the Starbucks.
She tells Ema about her new friend that night and finds she can't stop grinning.
“I'm gonna call her Climate Change, because you're thawing at an unprecedented ra-ate,” her sister singsongs as she bounces through the living room.
Lana chucks a throw pillow at her.