Top Law Schools

The general consensus on TLS and from those I have spoken to seems to be that for Atlanta BigLaw one needs to attend:
YH>UVA>Duke>Vanderbilt>Emory/UGA
and that other schools should not even play into the decision (EVEN STANFORD!?!?!). How true is this? If one were to attend a place like Chicago (who had strong ties to Georgia), would they really be in a worse position than if they had attended UVA? It seems unfortunate to me that somebody who knew they wanted to come home to practice for a few years in BigLaw would have to sacrifice some probability of attaining clerkships, academia, and government after their stint in BigLaw (assuming they land a spot to begin with, of course). And that's the other thing. Why would a person be forced to choose a school that offered a slightly lower placement in BigLaw over a better-placing school just to increase their chances in a certain market?

I guess my question is are ties+UVA/Duke really better for Atlanta than ties+Stanford/CCN and are ties+Vanderbilt/Emory/UGA really better than ties+PMBNCG?

Thanks.

if you have ties to Atlanta + good grades, you'll be fine attending any t-14.

there may be more Duke/UVA alum in Atlanta, and it would be easier to sell wanting to be in the South, but it doesn't matter. This is just from my personal experience and that of my friends who also targeted Atlanta at some point.

To second the above post, you can probably go to any T14 and be fine coming back.

The real answer is "it depends." It depends on your ties. If you have strong ties, any city for law school can be explained away by saying "you just wanted to be somewhere else for a few years to solidify your feelings that Atlanta was the place for you." Conversely, if you lived there for 3 years before going to Berkeley for law, they will not be as easily convinced Atlanta isn't your fall back after Bay Area.

What if a student was born and raised in GA (not Atlanta, but had family there and visited Atlanta many many times throughout his first 18 years), went out of state (still in the southeast) for undergrad, came back and worked in Atlanta for a few years, then went to CCN or another non-UVA/Duke T14. Would that constitute strong ties?

RobertBets wrote:What if a student was born and raised in GA (not Atlanta, but had family there and visited Atlanta many many times throughout his first 18 years), went out of state (still in the southeast) for undergrad, came back and worked in Atlanta for a few years, then went to CCN or another non-UVA/Duke T14. Would that constitute strong ties?

yes

RobertBets wrote:What if a student was born and raised in GA (not Atlanta, but had family there and visited Atlanta many many times throughout his first 18 years), went out of state (still in the southeast) for undergrad, came back and worked in Atlanta for a few years, then went to CCN or another non-UVA/Duke T14. Would that constitute strong ties?

To parrot Tiago: yes

HYS are best for atlanta