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[quote=Anonymous]Yes pedigree matters, at least for a time.

Absolutely coming out of law school, pedigree is very important. And any time you're trying to lateral as an associate, pedigree is very important - but of slightly less value to the extent you have a particular skill set.

As someone already noted, jumping from associate to partner has nothing to do with having a book of business (because you won't have a book of business then). Basically, as long as you're a good associate, you'll be promoted.  Has absolutely nothing to do with law school for that promotion.

Promotion from non-equity to equity partner is solely based on book of business. You can go to regional diploma mill university for your JD, and if you have $5m of business, you'll get promoted.  Same with making a lateral move to another law firm.  But reality is that regional diploma mill U does not tend to produce stellar rainmakers or lawyers, so we don't see many of them at the lateral partner ranks.

I would say the T14 thing is a bit fabricated. For your first biglaw gig, really, anything in T30 plus the top state school from your region - if you're top 1/3 or 1/2 from those schools, you should be fine to get recruited. I'm at an amlaw 30 firm and we have 30-ish schools we do OCI with, and once you're on that list of schools we're fairly indifferent to law school pedigree. No one cares more about harvard vs Vanderbilt once you get to the OCI stage. In fact, i think it's well known that the top 5 or so schools are not great for recruiting from, because they tend to have high attrition and often lack hard skills required for lawyering.

Once you land in biglaw, if you want to lateral as an associate, i think the T30 probably expands to T80, if the right skill set is there.  Schools like Miami and American - biglaw will hire you if there's a gap that needs to be filled. Lateral pickings are usually pretty slim. [/quote]

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