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<p>This perhaps overstates things a bit. A handful of the most elite firms in top legal markets like NY, San Francisco, and Washington are very choosy in their hiring and tend to concentrate their recruiting efforts on the most elite law schools. But there are a lot of law firms out there. I looked at the website of a top Minneapolis-based firm. With 650 lawyers in 19 offices in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, this is a highly successful national and international law firm. Their website helpfully lists all the law schools attended by their attorneys. I counted about 130 law schools. Certainly they hire a lot of people from T14 law schools, but they also hire people from strong regional schools in the markets they serve. So, for example, their Salt Lake City office has lots of lawyers from BYU and the University of Utah. Their NY office has people from Columbia and NYU, but also Brooklyn and Fordham. Their Denver office is heavily populated with people from the University of Colorado and the University of Denver. And so on.</p>
<p>Even Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the very top NY firms, lists lawyers from 132 law schools. Granted, its roster is pretty top-heavy with graduates of the top law schools: 100 from Harvard, 99 from Columbia, 67 from NYU, 49 from Yale, 33 from Penn, 32 from UVA, 21 from Chicago, 20 from Stanford, 16 from Michigan, 14 from Cornell. But they’ve also got 17 from Brooklyn, 16 from Rutgers, 9 from Fordham, 9 from New York Law School, 6 from St. John’s, 10 from GW, 10 from BU, 9 from American, 8 from Catholic U, 5 from Buffalo, 5 from Ohio State, and least 1 or 2 from dozes of other schools. Collectively, this adds up to a lot of lawyers who did NOT come from the elite law schools, perhaps not as much as half the firm, but possibly as much as a third.</p>