Law Schools

Last Woman Standing At World Series Of Poker Tournament Is A Lawyer

Everyone in the legal profession is rooting for her to take home the grand prize.

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Kelly Minkin (Photo by JB Lacroix/WireImage)

This year at the World Series of Poker tournament, the grand prize is $8.8 million, and one recent law school graduate has her eyes on the prize.

Meet Kelly Minkin, a medical malpractice defense lawyer at Kent & Wittekind. This year, she says her “expectation is to win.” We already know she’s great at beating the odds — she’s a 2014 graduate of Arizona Summit Law School, which recently lost its ABA accreditation. Minkin has been playing poker since her second year in law school, and she again finds herself as the last woman standing in the World Series of Poker’s Main Event. In 2015, she took home $211,821 in the tournament’s $10,000 buy-in No-limit Texas Hold ‘em World Championship, finishing in 29th place.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal has additional details on Minkin’s law school journey:

Long before she started dissecting her opponents on the poker table, Minkin planned on being a surgeon. She graduated from Arizona with a degree in molecular and cellular biology before attending law school in Phoenix.

She actually took the LSAT on a whim and passed it without studying.

“I had heard the LSAT was akin to an IQ test, so I was like, ‘Oh, this will be fun,’” she said. “I was just curious to see how it would go and I did well enough to get into law school.”

“I ended up procrastinating longer on taking the MCAT and doing (law school) for a year. Once I did that, I realized, ‘I can do this,’ and so I just stuck with it.”

Most people who “pass the LSAT” without studying and want to go to law school in Arizona likely wind up at Summit, but they certainly aren’t likely to wind up in Minkin’s position, with a law license and nearly a million in winnings from a successful poker career. Her cash haul from this event will make her a millionaire.

Just like in the legal profession, women face bias at the poker table, and men are shocked when they can ante up. “In general, women are stereotyped as weak players. So when you’re a woman and you’re not a weak player, that is an advantage,” Minkin says. “But now that I’m a little more recognizable, it’s not really like that anymore. A lot of players are more intimidated of me now.”

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Best of luck to Kelly Minkin as she attempts to take the grand prize at WSOP’s Main Event. Everyone in the legal profession is rooting for you.

Minkin last woman standing again in WSOP’s Main Event [Las Vegas Review-Journal]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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