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BYU Law Hooks Up With Match.Com for Mentors

By William Vogeler, Esq. on April 08, 2019

You could call it a match made in heaven, although that's not really the idea.

Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School has paired up with Match.com. The law school has engaged the dating website to match students with alumni for its mentoring program. The program will use Match Group's personality algorithm to make the matches.

The approach is definitely novel, but not a romantic one.

Not Romantic

It's the first time Match has used its algorithm outside the dating world. However, administrators say dating and mentoring have some common ground.

"There are similarities to dating in the way that a mentor and mentee would need to relate," said Jared Sine, general counsel for Match and a BYU graduate.

Match users set up online dating profiles; mentoring users do the same. They answer questions about respect for rules, standards of conduct, and more than the law. Students are then sorted into personality types, and paired with mentors who have complementary profiles. Photos, apparently, are not part of the program.

Based Online

Gayla Sorenson, assistant dean of external relations at the law school, says administrators want to create longer-lasting relationships between students and practitioners. In the past, mentoring programs didn't succeed. Part of the problem may have been that people didn't really "click," Sorenson said. The new program is designed to emphasize a service culture that is "part of our religious heritage," she said, where alumni give back.

Not that anybody would stray from the program design, but BYU students have a strict honor code to live by the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They don't have to be church members, but they have to act like it.

In other words, the mentoring program is not a dating a program. Just mentoring.

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