Don’t stop believing merely because there is no basis for belief.

Is it sensible to choose a law school based on the likelihood that you will find love there? Probably not, but in the absence of any data—and, indeed, in the absence of any plan or concept of how one would effectively gather the data—I am going to make this claim: If you were inclined to choose a law school based on the likelihood of finding love, you should pick Michigan.

Now, I recognize there is a counterargument here—that there are some in this world who think a law school setting likely to lead to love is one to be avoided, or, perhaps, outlawed. That would be the view espoused in Adam’s Rib, in which one character opines that “lawyers should never marry other lawyers; … from this comes idiot children … and other lawyers.” I’m the lawyer offspring of two lawyers and am married to a lawyer, so, you know. 

But let’s just assume we’re all in favor of love, even lawyer love. Sure, an unsupported, dataless claim might be viewed by today’s cynical youth as not particularly persuasive. Still, I have anecdotal evidence to beat the band.

Earlier this week, a 2008 alum sent me a link to an excellent blog post she had written for the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, the central point of which was to encourage Illinois lawyers to participate in professionalism-focused orientation events at various Illinois law schools. But at the outset of her exhortation, she indulged in some nostalgic recollections of her own orientation at Michigan Law: On the first day, she met three women who would become extremely close friends, along with her future husband. Not a bad lifetime haul for a single day’s effort.

She and I then had a little back and forth about my unfounded yet diehard belief that Michigan Law fosters more such relationships than other schools. She was likeminded—by which I mean she was perfectly prepared to express a rock-solid conviction that this is true, despite our joint lack of evidence or means of producing evidence. She invoked two alumni with whom she works, who agree with us. This is how movements get started, people!

The next day I happened to correspond with one of the alumna at whose wedding I had officiated. Although our conversation had nothing whatsoever to do with her marriage, somehow her adorable Michigan Law husband got dragged into the conversation and, in an instance of near-sickening domestic bliss, they jointly shared photos of stuff they were growing in their garden, teasing each other affectionately.

Now I’m on the East Coast, attending a couple of summer networking events for alumni, current students, and incoming students. The first was last night, in New York. Attending were one couple who had just passed the all-important two-week mark in their marriage—if you can survive that, you’re all set. Like my blogging friend and her husband, they too met during orientation. And like others before them, they played “The Victors” as their recessional—beautifully book-ended with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” as their last dance, which, I’m told, is the traditional last song at Rick’s. Talk about storybook romance! 

And lest anyone accuses me of heteronormative hegemony, I want to hastily point out that after the event, I ate dinner with a Michigan Law grad who is in a long-distance relationship with another Michigan Law grad that he better make an honest man out of one of these days. (They jumped the orientation gun by meeting during on a pre-enrollment visit to the Law School.)

Recognize that I am making a narrow argument. I am not marshaling as evidence  the alumna who is getting set to marry someone from the B-school, or my best friend, who is married to a former Law School employee I introduced her to. And I won’t count as datapoints two of the couples I hope to be seeing tonight in DC, who followed each other to Ann Arbor after having fallen in love during their undergrad education. (But hey, at least they weren’t driven apart during their legal studies! That’s something! Partial credit!) (Ed. Postscript: Neither couple was at the event—but another couple, united in love at Michigan Law, was, with their five-month-old maize-and-blue-clad baby in tow.) And I acknowledge that there were two women at the New York event who had both been made unhappy back in the day by the same male classmate, so I don’t mean to suggest that it is all bliss, all the time.

I speak in a limited way of law-on-law love, and make the small claim that there is something about the Michigan Law community that fosters relationship development—friendships, to be sure, but love more frequently than you might guess. (Notwithstanding the slanderous portrayal of Ann Arbor as love-killing capital seen in The Five-Year Engagement.) It’s just one of many reasons I consider mine to be a fantastic job: There is a distinct possibility that I am building up karmic capital merely by performing my duties. Although, come to think of it, given that it is Dean Baum’s office that has responsibility for section assignments, he may be getting credit for the shidduch; which is the but-for cause, admission or section assignment??? I will simply assume that given our volume operation, there is more than enough glory to go around.