Thomas Prol, who recently ended his term as president of the New Jersey State Bar Association, was a long way from the Garden State when the realization came that he wanted a career in law. It was the mid-1990s, and Prol was on a Peace Corps mission in Nepal.

“I hadn’t planned to go to law school,” said Prol in a recent interview with the Law Journal. But law would prove to be an effective outlet for two of his passions: environmental protection and LGBT rights.