One For The Law Books: Alums Document Starting and Finishing Law School as a Married Pair

When Loyola School of Law graduates Carlos Soto Raynal and Matilde Angulo Ochoa moved to the United States from Mexico to start their law degree in September 2002, the married couple had every single class together. 

Despite law school being notoriously regarded as putting a heavy strain on relationships, marriages and students themselves, Soto Raynal and Angulo started and finished their degrees all while maintaining a healthy and happy marriage. 

“An important thing is that we never competed against each other,” Soto Raynal said, his wife by his side. 

“I think that — and this is for marriage, not just as law students —  you can’t compete with your husband or wife, with your spouse,” Angulo continued. “Because your success is the other one’s success, and your failure is also.”

The couple said previous dean of the School of Law from 1978 to 2022 James Fraught told them they were the first married couple to start and finish their degrees together. Though Fraught couldn’t confirm to The Phoenix that they were first, he said the feat is highly plausible as he couldn’t remember others who graduated as a married couple before this. 

Nearly 20 years after Angulo and Soto Raynal left Loyola’s campus, they’ve become once again involved in the Rambler community  — this time as parents to undergraduate first-year student Carlos Soto-Angulo. 

The couple — who married in 2000 — graduated in 1998 with law degrees from Tecnológico de Monterrey in Chihuahua, Mexico. After practicing law in Mexico for two years, they moved to Chicago to pursue American law degrees.

Though she grew up in Juarez, Mexico, Angulo spent two summers in Chicago when she was in high school as her dad was a partner at Chicago-based law firm Baker & McKenzie. Her familiarity with the city stayed with her, and she knew she wanted to obtain an American law degree later in her career. 

“I’ve loved Chicago since I was 16 years old,” Angulo said. “So for me, it was like a no-brainer. This is where I want to go, and I want to live in this city.”

Both lawyers, Angulo’s parents practiced cross border transactional law — a type of law which focuses on the exchange of goods over national borders — resulting in many of their clients being from Chicago, she said. Additionally, going to school in the United States wasn’t unusual for Angulo because she attended primary school and high school in El Paso, Texas growing up. 

“She would go across the border every day with a student visa to go to school in El Paso,” Soto Raynal said. “She did that for 16 years.”

At Loyola, Angulo said though both she and her husband were good students, she had an advantage since she was used to taking classes in English from her time in El Paso. She explained she had more difficulty getting her degree in Mexico because she wasn’t adjusted to attending school in Spanish.

Nonetheless, the couple said they worked as a team to succeed together and support each other. Soto Raynal said being able to share the stress of researching, studying and preparing for class helped them understand each other since they were living the same experience. 

“You just can’t have breakdowns at the same time,” Angulo added, laughing. 

Now, the couple lives in Miami with their two children, where Angulo works as an immigration attorney for Catholic Legal Services and Soto Raynal works as a senior wealth strategist for a PNC private bank. 

With their oldest son, Soto-Angulo, attending Loyola as an undergraduate, the couple has had a unique opportunity to reacquaint themselves with Loyola. Because Angulo and Soto Raynal only attended the law school at Loyola’s Water Tower Campus, they said it’s been great to learn more about the school via their son.

“For us, it was getting to know Loyola as an undergrad,” Angulo said. 

Nonetheless, Angulo and Soto Raynal said they’ve been glad to see the same aspects of Loyola that made them fall in love with the school still exist for their son. They said they genuinely felt like staff and students cared for them both as individuals and as a couple. 

As Catholics, Soto Raynal said they were always especially touched when Loyola’s chaplain would look out for them, asking how they were doing and feeling whenever he could. 

After their first year of school, the couple no longer had every class together, meaning they spent more time apart, Soto Raynal said. He remembered professors making sure he and Angulo’s marriage was still okay since they weren’t together constantly the way many of their peers and Loyola faculty knew them to be the previous year. 

“We’re just not one number that they don’t really notice what’s going on, but they really look out for you,” Soto Raynal said.

After experiencing law school together, the two said the constant time spent with each other helped them through other eras of their marriage, like the COVID-19 Pandemic. 

Though he knew many couples who were deeply impacted by the stressors of the pandemic, Soto Raynal said being confined to the house with his wife made him feel nostalgic to their time at Loyola — this time, though, with their two kids. 

“I don’t think marriage is easy,” Angulo said. “You go through different phases in life, and Loyola was just one of them. Maybe one of the harder ones, but I think we did well.”

Editor’s Note: Carlos Soto-Angulo is the deputy opinion editor of The Phoenix.