From Justice Sonia Sotomayor's 'My Beloved World'

[T]he firm’s partners had elected me to membership. The good news came with a curious proviso, words that have stuck in my mind. “It’s clear that you won’t stay in private practice forever,” George [Pavia] said. “We know you’re destined for the bench someday. Dave [Botwinik] is even convinced you’ll go all the way to the Supreme Court. But with this offer, we ask only that you remain with us as long as you continue in private practice.”

To offer a partnership to someone not planning to stick around was unusually generous, especially in a firm so small that each partner is an integral part of the team. I accepted with enormous gratitude but also obvious mortification at Dave’s fantastical prophecy. If he could have known that I’d dreamed of becoming a judge since childhood, I might have taken it as an affectionate but overheated compliment. In fact, though, I had long refrained from verbalizing the ambition, understanding that any federal judgeship would require a rare alignment of political forces, as well as no small bit of luck. Dave may have intuited the direction of my dreams—as I would soon see, there was at least one other thing I kept mum about that was more obvious than I’d imagined—but even so, his talking about the Supreme Court like that made me wince, the way you might when an uncle exaggerates your accomplishments.