Anonymous User wrote:ITT: the truth is somewhere in the middle. But lol @ law school classmates rep mattering w/r/t lateral firm options to any serious degree.
You're wrong. It does matter. Do you really think that if you're moving, as, say, a fifth year, and the group you're targeting to move into has someone from your law school class, the partner - who has worked with your classmate five years - isn't going to ask him for feedback before pulling the trigger on hiring you?
Everything matters. Biglaw is a small world. It's real easy as a law student to think of biglaw as this amorphous blob of tens of thousands of anonymous lawyers, but speaking as someone who is five years out, biglaw is a more intimate, gossipy space than you can possibly imagine. I would say that about half my deals have a WGL that includes a name I know socially from HS, college or LS, to say nothing of folks I know professionally from past deals, who are everywhere.