While in law school in the '70s, Warren was deeply influenced by the "Law and Economics" movement, a corporate-funded initiative with the explicit goal of cultivating more conservative judges. When she started her law career at UT Austin, some guy named Bill "Slick Willy" Clinton became the target of her ire. You see, Clinton made a run to return to the Arkansas governor's mansion in 1982, and one of his central campaign promises was to prevent utility companies from preying on the poor and the elderly. Warren sided squarely with the companies, asserting that the state should institute automatic utility rates even if prices went up, and that consumer advocacy groups could eat it (after they'd paid for it, naturally).
What ultimately caused Warren to start on the long road to progressive champion was when she began looking through bankruptcy cases to prove that people filing for it were "all a bunch of cheaters." She found the opposite, that it was mostly people who'd fallen on hard times and couldn't get back up, because the system isn't designed to help them. So she set out to change that system. And along the way, she clashed with some other guy named ...