Law School Love Stories
Alumni Couples Share How They Met and Where They Are Today
Case books, cold calls, and . . . Cupid? You never know where you might find love, including where you learn the law. This Valentine’s Day, in our inaugural edition of “Law School Love Stories,” three alumni couples who met as classmates at the Law School share their stories.
Chris Luzzie, ’75, and Pat Bauer, ’75
We met in the summer following our first year at the Law School and were married two years after graduation. Attending the same law school at the same time with the same classmates and faculty provided a common foundation that has helped the two of us navigate various personal and professional matters as our lives have unfolded.
Our personal lives include raising two sons, gaining two daughters-in-law, and now enjoying time with three young grandsons. From 1975 through 1979, Chris worked at the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office in Saint Paul while Pat was clerking for a federal judge in Milwaukee and working for a good-sized law firm in Minneapolis. After moving to Iowa City in 1979, Chris was in the Legal Clinic at the University of Iowa College of Law for a year before starting with Iowa Legal Aid where she worked for thirty-nine years before retiring in 2019. Pat taught at the College of Law until he retired in 2021, and both of us continue to be involved in state bar and other professional activities.
With reunions being “two-fers” for us, we usually don’t see much of each other during group events but generally visit with other classmates separately and then afterwards compare notes to learn of the things that have been happening in their lives. We’ve attended all previous Law School class reunions, and hope many of our classmates will make it to our 50th coming up this May.
Marc Wolinsky, ’80, and Barry Skovgaard, ’80
We met the first days of Law School, in September 1977. Our class had only about 180 members, so everyone knew everyone else. It was a different time: openly gay people at the Law School were rare, and we did not know anyone in a gay relationship. But the Law School, intellectually at least, was an accepting place. The first-year criminal law curriculum included a section on the decriminalization of consensual gay sex in the Model Penal Code, and highlighted Illinois’ adoption of the provision in 1961. Kudos to [then] Dean Norval Morris who taught that lesson with extraordinary understanding and empathy. He made a lasting impression on us and captured, in our minds, the classic liberal worldview embracing individual rights, equality, and human dignity that makes the University of Chicago a very special place.
We were friends first and fell in love over the course of our three years at the Law School. By graduation, we moved together to New York to start our careers. After clerking for Judge Henry Friendly, Marc went on to become a litigation partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Barry went on to found his solo law practice serving individuals.
We were finally able to marry twenty-five years after we became a married couple in every way except in the eyes of the law. Luckily, we always remained in good health and did not suffer the fate of a number of our gay colleagues from the Law School and too many close friends. But the AIDS crisis drove our commitment to fight for gay rights, culminating in the federal recognition of marriage equality. Barry was instrumental in the fight as the co-chair of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Our love for the Law School and everything it has done for us is embodied in our support of the Stonewall Scholarship, a fund whose creation was spearheaded by Stephen Phillips,’81, and the late Jim Hormel, ’58, who was the first openly gay US ambassador.
After fulfilling legal careers, we have left the active practice of the law and started our “second act” as the cofounders of Casa Doce Music. Our company has one mission: to advance the careers of brilliant musicians and bring great music to millions of people around the world. We have four signed artists and are having a blast. We run our music company from our homes in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and Water Mill, New York.
Nikhil Abraham, JD/MBA’11, and Molly Abraham, ’10
We became friends our 2L year when we started studying together, though Nik was quickly terrified of Molly’s intensity about schoolwork (knowing this and still proposing is what we call “coming to the nuisance”). We carpooled to class and studied together for the next two years before finally realizing there was more to it than creating Securities outlines.
After law school, we spent several years in New York, where Nik worked in consulting and Molly practiced litigation at Wachtell. We took the leap to Silicon Valley in 2016 after having our first son, Aiden. We had a second, slightly more mischievous son, Miles, in 2019. Nik served as a CFO for tech companies including Udacity, Resident, and most recently, SteadyMD. Molly started her in-house career as the GC of Kitty Hawk, a flying car company, and is currently a VP of Legal at Coinbase, where her boss is also a Law School alum. She is just as intense as she was in law school and Nik still feigns shock at this fact. We can’t wait to see everyone at Reunion this May!
Have a Law School love story you would like to share? Email us at communications@law.uchicago.edu.