Chatting at a happy hour. Working on a Law Review note. Relaxing with a board game. Prepping for moot court. Bonding over X-Men. There are many, many paths to love. Here’s how these alumni met that special someone during their time at the Law School.
Taylor Ackerman ’22 and Ross Steinberg ’21
Love was in the cards for Taylor and Ross. They first met in 2019 playing Wingspan, an ornithology-themed board game, at a weekly Friday gathering of Law Students of Catan, a student group for game enthusiasts. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, they returned to their respective family homes for lockdown—Charlevoix, Michigan for Taylor and Chicago, Illinois for Ross—but the games continued as Law Students of Catan set up an online community on the social platform Discord.
“We started getting much, much closer when the board games went virtual and we had so much time to chat,” Ross recalls. They bonded over their mutual interest in international law, travel, and books. “It was a great way to connect during a time when no one was allowed to see each other in person,” Taylor says.
As their long-distance romance progressed, the two made extended visits to each other during lockdown, minimizing back-and-forth travel because of COVID. “I lived with his family for eight weeks basically the first time I met them, which was very intense,” says Taylor. “Lovely, but very intense. And then Ross had to do the same with my family.” Ross adds, “It was a really nice accelerant.”
Ross proposed at Christmas 2022 by hiding an engagement ring inside their favorite board game, Dominion. At their July 2024 wedding in Michigan, the guest tables were named after board games. Ross, an antitrust attorney with the Federal Trade Commission, and Taylor, who works on tenant defense at the Legal Aid Society, live in Jersey City. Their first child, a girl, is due in June.
Mikael Schantli LLM ’20 and Sakeena Moeen LLM ’20
The first impression that Sakeena had of her future fiancé, Mikael, wasn’t entirely favorable. In class, she noted his laptop’s dirty screen, he remembers. “It’s funny,” Sakeena says, “because cleaning is still something we fight about.” Then she ran into him at a happy hour at Amity Hall. “It was the first conversation [during the semester] where I just laughed for 40 minutes straight,” Sakeena recalls.
They began studying together in the Law Library, “on the main floor…where the windows look out onto the park,” says Mikael. On Valentine’s Day weekend, during a group trip to Washington DC, things took a romantic turn. But since Sakeena, a native of Pakistan, knew her Hauser Fellowship would take her to Paris after graduation and Mikael was headed back to Stockholm, they resolved to return to New York as friends.
“And then we didn’t stick to that,” says Mikael.
After graduation, when they headed to their respective jobs in Paris and Stockholm, Mikael encouraged Sakeena to apply for Swedish residency. When it was approved, Sakeena moved her job to Stockholm. She now is a legal counsel at a Stockholm-based solar power company and Mikael is a litigator at a Swedish law firm.
When the time came to pop the question, though, Mikael waited for a trip back to New York. In August 2024, he asked her to marry him in the place where they first fell in love—their study spot in the Law Library overlooking the park. In the days before the semester started, the Library was even quieter than usual. “At first I thought he was pranking me,” Sakeena said. “Then I saw that there was an actual ring in the box.” After a lot of shock and some tears, she said yes.
“Then she got self-conscious because we were in the library,” Mikael noted, “but I said, ‘Don’t worry, we have the whole place to ourselves!’” They plan to marry in June 2026.
Latoya Herring ’12 and Marcus Williams ’12
In the fall of 2009, as Marcus participated in a Black Law Students Association weekend retreat in Warwick, New York, he noticed that his 1L classmate Latoya was wearing an X-Men T-shirt showing one of his favorite characters, Bishop.
“He asked me, ‘Are you really a fan?’” Latoya recalls. “And then I asked him, ‘What do you know about it?’ That got us talking one-on-one. By the end of that weekend, I decided that he was going to be my best friend.”
In the months that followed, the two often hung out, watching blockbuster films of the 1980s and 1990s like Back to the Future and Terminator 2 on DVD. Both were in relationships with other people. But first Marcus’s relationship ended, and then he learned Latoya and her boyfriend had split up. “I called a good friend of mine from college,” Marcus remembers. “I was like, ‘I don't know what I'm supposed to do here.’ He said, ‘Wait. You gotta give her time.’”
By the middle of their second year of law school, it was time. Marcus and Latoya started dating. Latoya says that having to balance the rigors of law school with a committed relationship further cemented their bond. “We knew each other’s schedules and our obligations,” she says. “Whenever finals started and we hunkered down, we knew what we had to do.”
In 2016, they married, honeymooning in Hawaii. After working at several law firms, Marcus is a director with New York’s PeterSan Group, a legal recruiting firm. Latoya, who previously worked for Legal Aid and clerked for Judge Alicea Elloras-Ally in Kings County Family Court in New York, is now an associate at Cohen Clair Lans Greifer & Simpson LLP, a matrimonial firm. They reside with their 3-year-old son in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn.
This Valentine’s Day, the couple plans to rekindle a tradition by watching a horror film. “We don’t want to go to the restaurants with the prix fixe menus,” says Latoya. “Maybe the world will catch up with our nerdiness, but this is a lot more fun.”
Lloyd Zimmerman ’78 and Rebecca Palmer ’78
Barely two months into her first year, Becky had to face Lloyd as an opponent in a moot court argument. They were in the same Contracts class, but she’d only spoken to him once before. “Lloyd came up to me and said, ‘I think you’ll find this case helpful,’ she recalls. “And I’m skeptical because there’s a lot of competition in our class. And so I go up to a friend who knows Lloyd, and I asked him, ‘Is he trying to throw me off?’ And Al said, ‘No, Becky, he’s like the nicest guy in our whole class.’”
That moment forged a friendship between Lloyd and Rebecca, which led to dating and later, shared quarters in a Chelsea apartment. Lloyd, a native of Chicago, and Becky, reared in Iowa, both loved New York—from regular jaunts to Mamoun’s Falafel on MacDougal Street to runs around Central Park. Married in 1983, they settled in Minneapolis. Becky became a partner at Maslon Edelman Borman & Brand LLP. Lloyd worked as a trial lawyer for the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before being appointed as a judge in state court by then–Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura.
With two children and four grandchildren, Lloyd and Becky—both now retired—are enjoying what they call their “happily ever after,” including travel. They attribute their nearly five decade-long relationship to having personalities that balance each other out. “Lloyd is less quick to anger than I am,” says Becky. “Having at least one person in a couple who is kind of chill makes for really good chemistry.” Lloyd agrees. “People are always wanting to talk about themselves,” he says. “But it’s rare to find someone who’s going to listen and acknowledge who you are. If you do, then you’ve unlocked the secret to any kind of relationship.”
William Brandt ‘71 and Susan Mascette Brandt ‘71
Bill and Susan met in 1970 during their second year of law school when Susan, a Note and Comment editor at the NYU Law Review, met with Bill to edit his note. “She was a great, great editor, and I loved everything she did,” says Bill. “I think at that point I was kind of mesmerized by Susan. After we were all done editing the note, I said, ‘Why don't we go out to celebrate and have a drink and walk around Greenwich Village?’”
The couple got engaged in the spring of their 3L year and were married several months later, a week after the bar exam, in the Law School’s Faculty Library. “I went up to see the dean’s secretaries and they were tickled pink because no one had ever gotten married in the Faculty Library,” Susan says. Officiating at the ceremony was Judge Irving Younger, who had been the couple’s Evidence professor.
Bill and Susan began their careers at law firms in Manhattan, but eventually relocated to Rochester, New York. Bill joined Nixon Hargrave Devans & Doyle, later Nixon Peabody, handling complex civil litigation, and Susan practiced in the areas of M&A and securities law at Harter, Secrest & Emery. In 2007, they moved to Massachusetts to be closer to their two sons and grandchildren. They’ve now been married for 53 years. “I was the person who she was looking for, I guess,” says Bill. “And she was the person I was looking for.”
Posted February 10, 2025
Did you meet your life partner at NYU Law? We’d love to hear about it! Contact us at law.communications@nyu.edu, and let us know if you would like for your story to be considered for our next Valentine's Day feature on finding love at NYU Law.