Before it was a movie with Reese Witherspoon, it was a novel.
After studying jewelry design at UCLA through college, rich girl Elle Woods is devastated when her boyfriend since high school Warner breaks up with her to go to law school, voicing his desire to find somebody who is more serious to marry into his wealthy and influential family. Not one to give up, Elle resolves to also study law at Stanford to show Warner she's as serious as any other woman.
She runs into obstacles when she finds out Warner has moved on to a law student named Sarah who drives a white Volvo, that she has to tone down her social life and fashion sense to be taken seriously by the professors and the other students, and that law isn't a terribly interesting subject. However, she finds a way to get interested when the firm she interns at decides to defend a famous aerobics instructor who is charged with the murder of her husband.
Provides examples of:
- Ambition Is Evil: Elle's friends, Margot and Serena, think law school is an unacceptable alternative lifestyle to shopping all day, and going to job interviews instead of vacationing in Aspen is downright mean.
- Artistic License – Animal Care: Elle brings her chihuahua to the Halloween party, in a leash fastened around her waist. He almost gets stepped on a few times. Not to mention the champagne in his dish.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Elle is really a jewelry designer, so during a deposition where she's supposed to take notes she notices Brooke's Gemini-themed ear rings and starts drawing zodiac-themed and later law-themed jewelry.
- Chekhov's Skill: Her social life, which includes such tasks as arranging seating for a friend's wedding, has developed Elle's logic skills to the point that she thinks the extra credits puzzles at the end of the LSAT are fun. When she represent the defendant at a murder trial a year later, she makes use of her knowledge of hair styling to destroy a witness who had perjured herself on the stand.
- Comically Missing the Point: Also dramatically. When Margot tells Elle about Chutney finding her father murdered, she mentions that Chutney's stepmother was a year younger than her, and that "she shot the old geezer point blank".Elle: That's so awful.Margot: I know. I'd just die if my father married somebody younger than I am.
- Continuity Snarl: A few details can't seem to keep themselves straight. Did Elle and Warner break up in the fall before or the spring after her January LSAT? Does Chutney's mother sit at the end of the line or in the middle? Stuff like that.
- Cool Car: Elle switches her BMW for a range rover, as she thinks it's more in line with what Warner would consider a "serious car". His new girlfriend drives a white Volvo, though.
- Disproportionate Retribution: To punish Brooke for being her age when marrying her father, Chutney decides to shoot her point-blank and kill her.
- Foreshadowing:
- Unlike in the movie, we learn about the Windham murder quite early in the book.
- Elle guesses that Brooke is innocent and Chutney the killer early on.
- Formerly Fat: Brooke used to look like Violet Beauregarde after she ate that gum according to herself, but developed a very effective work-out regime which made her rich when she started teaching it to others.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: In-universe, Fran feels it's this that law professors say "sub-poena" all the time.
- Gold Digger: Permanently subverted according to Elle. In her view, it takes a lot of work to stay married to someone who would marry someone who would marry them for their money, so they always end up earning it.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Elle is jealous of Warner's fiance Sarah, and Sarah feels threatened by Warner's ex Elle.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Elle's "blonde philosophy", which holds that a True Blonde has an optimistic view of life. She holds that any True Blonde has a heart of gold but not necessarily hair of gold. At her hypothetical law firm she only wants to represent True Blondes. In the movie this became "I only want innocent clients".
- Halloween Episode: The chapter in which Elle goes to a Halloween party.
- Hidden Depths: Warner loves Scorcese films and wants to direct movies.
- In-Series Nickname: Other law students star using the nickname for Elle that Sarah's friend Claire came up with: Barbie.
- In-Universe Factoid Failure: A wealthy woman is adamant that the sun rises in the west.
- It's All About Me: After they become friends, Elle and Sarah discuss how Warner needs all his relationships to be about him.
- Ivy League for Everyone: Subverted as unlike in the movie, Elle goes to Stanford.
- Law of Disproportionate Response: The Thetas once beat the Delta Gammas in a swimsuit contest, so Brooke, a former Theta, doesn't even deserve legal representation in her murder trial. Just ask Serena.
- Lovable Alpha Bitch: Elle was this in college, seeing nothing wrong with it, and notes that the tables are turned in law school, where everyone is trying to be an Alpha Bitch and status is determined less by how pretty you can make yourself and more by how serious you look.
- Mirror Character: Elle and Sarah end up rejecting Warner for the same reasons. Sarah breaks off the engagement, while Elle refuses to take him back because he sees both of them as a means to an end.
- MRS Degree: Elle's initial motivation for wanting a law degree is to get Warner back in the process. She ends up subverting the trope by rejecting him and embracing her new career path instead.
- No True Scotsman: Elle claims that no true blonde, even if she's a natural non-blonde, would ever dye her hair anything but blonde.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: When Elle's Blind Date Austin asks if she is seeing someone, she thinks he is asking if she's dating someone else and says "yes", but he means a therapist and replies "good".
- Punny Title: The title is a pun on "legally blind" which alludes to the Dumb Blonde stereotype, and is about a natural blonde who goes to law school. Given some extra dimension with Elle's dreams of starting a law firm where they only represent True Blondes (tm).
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Elle initially decides that Brooke must be innocent because she is blonde, while her stepdaughter is a brunette. She comes up with justifications later, but that's what she starts with.
- Shout-Out:
- Sydney and his friends are all trekkies.
- Brooke used to look like the "blueberry girl" in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
- Lots of real celebrities are mentioned by name, the story being partially set in L.A. For instance, Will and Jada were in the restaurant when Warner dumped Elle.
- Madonna also gets a mention for dying her hair for the "Die Another Day" video.
- Smarter Than You Look: Elle looks stupid to the other law students because she refuses to conform to their aesthetic standards, but logic puzzles are nothing to her, and her deductive skills let her figure out anything from who's definitely blonde (any woman who marries a billionaire her great grandfather's age) to who the real murderer is (his entitled late-in-life offspring).
- Stop Being Stereotypical: Played with. Elle suffers some ostracism for looking the way she does. She defies the blonde stereotype by being smart and hard-working, and exploits it in the Wyndham trial, where her knowledge of fashion wins her the case.
- Take That!: Elle considers Madonna to no longer be a True Blonde after she dyed her hair an "icky black" for the "Die Another Day" music video.
