In an article centered on the relationship between law school student debt and law school graduates’ working income (short answer: law students, in the vast main, borrow far more than their subsequent incomes support), there appeared this statement by a University of Miami law school graduate on why she chose UM and huge debt over a “lesser” law school that offered her a significant scholarship:

You go to any courthouse in Miami and the judge went to UM, the judge is a teacher at UM, there’s some sort of connection to UM[.]

There is this expectation that judges will be swayed by personal relationships, by school tie relationships, far more than they will be by the merits of the case before them and text of the law(s) governing that case.

Sadly, that expectation is both widespread and at least partially valid.