PROVO — Whether a woman uses her law degree to prosecute white-collar crime, draw up legal contracts or help her 11-year-old son with algebra, the educational experience itself is life changing and beneficial.

"Education is necessary for fulfilling life's purposes," Nancy Stevenson Van Slooten told a predominantly female audience at BYU last week. "That's really what it's about. Everybody has a different mission. Everyone will apply their education differently, it's not cookie cutter for everyone."

Van Slooten, who this month will become the first female chair of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, moderated a panel discussion of LDS female attorneys who all said they have used their law degrees to better their families, church and communities.

"A law degree and law experience isn't just about becoming a lawyer, it's more about growing a mind," said RonNell Andersen Jones, an associate law professor at BYU and mother of two. "I went to law school with one kind of brain and I left law school with this other kind of brain."

And even though Megan Gee, a 1988 BYU law school graduate, only practiced law for a few years before she decided to stay home and take care of her four children, two of whom have special needs, the degree has proved invaluable.

"I have seen people's eyes change when they know I've gone to law school," she said. "They think I'm just a mother of four kids, then all of a sudden the respect comes into their eyes, it's like magic. If I knew that all I had to do was spend three years (in law school) to get that kind of respect for the rest of my life, three years was a small price to pay."

Recently retired Judge Sheila K. McCleve said that when she was in eighth grade, she told her dad she wanted to be a nurse.

"My father said to me, 'You could be a doctor.' Back in those days if you were a woman, you just thought you'd be a nurse, not a doctor," McCleve said. "It really was my dad who believed that I should be educated, and do anything I wanted to do."

Latter-day Saint women are encouraged to get an education for the sake of education, not just as a safeguard against divorce or the death of a spouse, said Elder John K. Carmack, who opened the evening's discussion.

Elder Carmack, an emeritus Seventy and the executive director of the church's Perpetual Education Fund, reminded the group that church leaders support both men and women receiving an education, which in many cases can be augmented by the PEF.

"The Lord expects both men and women to increase their talents and use them," he said. "Obtain all (the education) you can, fulfill your ambitions or goals one way or another, now or later. Improve and increase your talents, use your education and talents for yourselves and families and communities. Do this, and you will not regret it."

LeAnn Wheeler said she was the only LDS student in her graduating class at Rutgers University Law School in New Jersey and had her third and fourth children while in law school. After clerking for a firm on Wall Street and on the Colorado Supreme Court, she retired to stay home with her five children.

"People would say, 'Why waste your law education to say home with your children?' But how can you ever waste education. It is invaluable."

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