Rewind 30 years ago to when Sonia Sotomayor was a third-year law student at Yale University, and, according to a friend and former mentee, the 24-year-old already possessed "tremendous powers of persuasion." Catherine Sandoval, now a law professor at Santa Clara University, said Sotomayor "can be a real force. But she is also effective in a collegial way as a listener."

While completing her last year in law school, Sotomayor became a friend and mentor to Sandoval, who was, at the time, a freshman at Yale. The two have kept in touch throughout the years, reconnecting periodically through the "Yale networks," Sandoval said.

Sotomayor was an "analytical, very persuasive" person in those days, Sandoval said, adding that she still sees evidence of those traits in her mentor's opinions on the appellate court.

Sandoval recalls bonding with Sotomayor over not just a common ethnicity -- they're both Hispanic -- but their shared ambitions.

"I knew when I was a young girl growing up in East L.A. that I wanted to be a lawyer," Sandoval said. "She also knew when she was a young girl in the Bronx that she wanted to be a lawyer. We had very similar aspirations and both came from families of very modest means."

Sandoval is one of many friends and associates who have gone public about Sotomayor in recent weeks:

• The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post interviewed Sotomayor's former colleagues from the New York District Attorney's Office.

• The Yale Daily News got in touch with her former classmates.

• The Blog of Legal Times reported on a letter sent to the White House by Sotomayor's former law clerks, and interviewed some of them.

• ABC News contacted Sotomayor's brother, Juan, who expressed anger over the criticism directed toward his sister.

• National Journal's Alexis Simendinger spoke with longtime Sotomayor friend Dawn Cardi for some insight into the nominee's life away from the bench.