Malcom Gladwell addresses this strange credentialism in the legal industry in a recent podcast. In his reckoning, entry into top law schools is determined almost entirely on LSAT scores, and the LSAT favors people who can process questions extremely quickly. But good lawyering is done by deliberative people who often don't perform well on standardized tests. In the podcast, a guest who took a look a legal hiring determined that LSAT or resume from top firms were not good markers of a good lawyer, so yes, legal hiring seems to be very broken. http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/31-puzzle-rush