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Comment by sbardle | Hacker News Reader

I still think certain professional careers will always exist for the most passionate and high quality candidates (or, alas, the best connected).

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Regarding the best connected category -- lawyers eventually move up to become partners, who are rainmakers. Their job is to bring in deals and manage the client relationship, rather than drafting the paperwork. The work is very different from that of the associate level.

WSGR takes a mix of top 5 law school grads as well as Santa Clara law school grads. The latter is seen as having a better local network through their family and upbringing (and have a better retention track record compared to their higher academically ranked counterparts), and are seen as effective future rainmakers even if their legal abilities are inferior to their peers.

I believe it's a misattribution to automatically equate lower-ranked law schools with "inferior legal abilities". Especially considering that law school coursework (1) is largely the same at various law schools, and (2) rarely covers the same subject matter as actual practice. The prestige is different, sure, but that is more an amalgamation of undergraduate GPA and LSAT scores than representative of actual legal ability.

Disclaimer: SCU law grad

Yeah this is just second hand information from those who went to the toppest of law schools, who are naturally rather insecure about themselves and are surprisingly condescending.

I agree, but I'd add that the amount of money people are willing to pay for that quality will fall dramatically if technology provides a cheap alternative. The cost of education will have to fall in accordance.

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