At McLane, Ayotte dove into corporate law, working on civil, commercial and criminal cases. Her most important assignment, however, was as part of a defense team on a three-month jury trial "involving RICO, conspiracy, robbery, carjacking, and firearms offenses." That case hinged on DNA evidence, then a new tool in legal cases. Ayotte was able to draw on her experience with this type of evidence when she joined the New Hampshire's attorney general's office in 1998.

Attorney General's Office

Within two years at the AG's office, Ayotte was the head of the homicide unit. Her most rewarding case, she would say in 2004, was prosecuting a man who killed a 6-year-old, drawing on her experience with DNA evidence. Her job was grizzly: she prosecuted murder cases that involved drowning, dismemberment and suffocation.

"If you asked me in law school, I would never have envisioned myself prosecuting murder cases. Doing those types of cases is difficult but rewarding," she said in 2004.

In 2002, she took on a particularly high-profile case in which two teenagers were eventually convicted of killing two professors in Hanover, the small town where Dartmouth College is located.

Not long after that, in 2003, Ayotte left the AG's office to serve as the legal counsel for newly-elected Gov. Craig Benson (R).

"I got a call from the governor's staff out of the blue. I was not politically involved," she said later.

It seemed like a unique opportunity, but it was not the right fit. Within the year, she was back at the AG's office, and in 2004, Benson appointed her to its helm, as attorney general.

Attorney General

As attorney general, Ayotte worked on three cases that would define her five years in the office.

In 2005, Ayotte defended before the U.S. Supreme Court a New Hampshire law that required doctors notify the parents of women under the age of 18 who were having abortions. The case put Ayotte in an awkward situation. Benson had lost his reelection campaign to Democratic Gov. John Lynch, who opposed support the law. Ayotte pursued the case anyway. Ultimately, New Hampshire's legislature repealed the law, rendering the legal work moot, but the case established Ayotte's credentials as an anti-abortion leader.

In 2008, her office won convictions in two murder trials, cementing her reputation as a law-and-order advocate. Michael Addison was sentenced to the death penalty for killing a New Hampshire police office -- the first time in almost 50 years that the death penalty was used in New Hampshire courts.

"A life sentence doesn't do justice in this case," she argued at the time.

A year later, the Republican Party recruited Ayotte to run for the state's open Senate seat to replace Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). She had told Gov. Lynch that she intended to stay on as the AG when he reappointed her in 2009, but as she wrote in an email to a friend that year, "When will an opportunity like this come along again?"

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