Law Schools

Turns Out Harvard Law School Is A Great Matchmaker

Why do law students fall in love? This professor has some theories.

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Stop for a second and imagine the type of people who go to Harvard Law School. Now picture the type who want their wedding announcements in the New York Times. There’s probably a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram. So, on the one hand it makes a ton of sense that you’ll see Harvard Law alums marring one another. But three recent couples Hannah Diamond and Sam Feldman, and Lindsay Church and Andrew Ellis (both married last weekend), and Habin Chung and Mark Jia (married in 2017) up the probability stakes as all three of the couples from the Class of 2016 met in the same sextion — excuse me, section, in their 1L year.

The New York Times is very aware of this coincidence. Rather than just let it pass without mention, obvious to only the most dedicated of Vows readers, they did a follow-up — cheekily titled Love and Law: Recent Mergers in 1L, Section 6 — to investigate the shocking revelation that young people forced into an intense and high pressure situation sometimes fall in love.

Turns out the professor who led that now infamous section, Jon Hanson, has a few theories as to why the registrar’s office had such a high hit rate in the matchmaking department.

“One, there is nothing to see here,” he said, explaining that 560 students in 1L are divided into sections of 80 students each. “It’s just probability. They are arriving at a certain stage of their life. They are thinking of long-term plans and are young enough not to be committed. Love connections emerge from interaction. It happens to everyone in every section.”

Yup, that tracks. It’s simple human nature that you create close bonds with those you go through transformative experiences with. Some of those bonded people fall in love and get married, not much to see there. But of course Professor Hanson is also willing to entertain more complex theories in which he plays a more pronounced role:

Professor Hanson’s dismissiveness melted away a bit with what he described as his second, “slightly more elaborate theory.”

“Section 6 has a long tradition of being a noncompetitive and community-oriented place,” he said. “In a milieu of competition, abstraction, individualism and hard work, this section was a little bit of an oasis than most students get to enjoy in 1L.”

That sure sounds better than the cutthroat world of 1L year even laypeople are familiar with thanks to the work of Scott Turow. Hopefully Professor Hanson didn’t strain anything trying to pat himself on the back.

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But wait — there’s more. In this version, Professor Hanson takes a positively starring role in the love lives of his students.

Professor Hanson’s third theory is a more elaborate version of the second one.

“We spend a lot of time scratching below the surface of doctrines, professional norms, and we spend time in a more personal place,” he said. “I try to bring in a human component into section. I welcome partners and spouses. I ask students to share baby pictures, and ask students to guess who they are. We see something about backgrounds, commonality. I try to build in opportunities to display their other sides.”

Perhaps Professor Hanson can help the school with a new slogan. Harvard Law School: come for the top-notch legal education, stay for the love connections.

headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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