Morgan Chu, chair of Irell & Manella’s litigation group, and his wife Helen gave $31.4 million to Harvard Law School — its largest gift on record — funding six professorships, announced Sunday 25 October. Robert and Joan Clifford gave $30 million to DePaul’s College of Law, announced Monday 26 October.

Two senior litigators, both giving to their own law schools, within a day of each other, at effectively the same number. Inference, not document: nothing connects the two decisions, and a sample of two is a coincidence until it is three. What it does establish is the price point — roughly $30m buys the largest gift in a top law school’s history in one case and a renamed college in the other, which is the fact that defeats the “naming rights were cheap” angle in section 03.