Before she had taken a single bite of her hamburger, Mrs. Clinton tore into the business at hand: "I have two questions for you: How are women affected by the bankruptcy laws, and how did a woman get to be a chaired professor at Harvard Law School?"

For the next 25 minutes, I pounded Mrs. Clinton with graphs, charts and projections. She ate fast and asked questions even faster. I have taught bankruptcy law to thousands of students — some of them among the brightest in the country — but I never saw one like Mrs. Clinton. Impatient, lightning-quick and interested in all the nuances. In just half an hour, she went from knowing almost nothing about the bankruptcy system to grasping the counter-intuitive twist that single mothers were helped when their ex-husbands filed bankruptcy because these men could discharge credit card debts and use the money to catch up on their child support. I explained to Mrs. Clinton how the pending bankruptcy bill would effectively dismantle bankruptcy protections for families, forcing single mothers to compete with legions of credit card bill collectors for an ex-husband's income and making it more difficult for families to hold on to their homes.

At the end of our discussion, Mrs. Clinton stood up and said, "Well, I'm convinced. It is our job to stop that awful bill. You help me, and I'll help you."