The following story originally appeared this February in Pro Se, the Student Newspaper of the University of Connecticut School of Law and was written by your Editor-in-Chief.

SPRINGFIELD–When Congressman Christopher Murphy a 2002 graduate of UCONN Law announced last year he was running for retiring senator, Joseph Leiberman, seat he became probably the highest profile graduate of the school running for US Senate.  However, he was not the first with connections to the school and not the last.

Susan Bysiewicz, the former Secretary of State also vying for the Democratic nomination to succeed Leiberman, can claim a connection, too.  Her mother was a Law Librarian at the school for many years.  However, still another Senate candidate in another state with a national following can claim ties to the law school.

Consumer Advocate and Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy for Senate to defeat Republican Scott Brown last year.  Before that, however, Warren spent the better part of the previous year setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a one-stop shop to guard consumers against unfair or fraudulent financial products.

To help in that endeavor, Warren turned to Patricia McCoy, Director of the Insurance Law Center, due to her expertise on mortgages and home equity markets.  “I’ve known Pat since, well forever,” Warren said during a campaign stop in Springfield this month.  She said Prof. McCoy was “one of the very first people” she put in place while setting up the bureau in the Fall of 2010.

However, Warren’s connections to the law school are not just professional.  Her husband, Bruce Mann, also a law professor at Harvard today, began his teaching career at UCONN.  According to Law School archives, the courses Mann taught over two years at the law school, which was then located in West Hartford on Asylum Avenue, included Property, Legal History and Trusts and Estates.

Warren and Mann met at a convention for new law professors in Miami.  Not too long thereafter, according to Warren, they were married in Farmington.  Professor Hugh Macgill and his wife stood up for them at their wedding.

Prof. Macgill was at UCONN when Mann began teaching.  Warren called Macgill her husband’s guide, coach and critic as he began his career in legal instruction.  Mann would leave the law school shortly after he married Warren in part to better coordinate his teaching assignments with those of his wife.

While Warren herself cannot did not teach at the school, the relationships she and her husband have maintained have given members of the Law School community influence on the national stage.  For example, the mortgage regulations Prof. McCoy helped write during the CFPB’s infancy could have a major impact as the agency endeavors to make mortgages more understandable consumers.

Disclosure: The writer of this article is a Massachusetts resident and publishes a blog that has written about Warren before.