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Is going to undergrad + law school in the general vicinity of the area, good enough for ties? Even if you don't have any family there or have visited the place (it's like an hour drive away from my undergrad).

Generally, sure. In any interview setting, though, I think the most important thing is to emphasize strongly the fact that you actually do want to work in X market (and prefer it over all others, to the extent that statement is true). I work in a secondary market and have been doing interviews for my firm this year, and we mostly just want to feel confident that you actually would want to live here after graduation. Ties alone aren't necessarily enough (again, depending on the context/situation), but verbal emphasis can be.

Anonymous User wrote:Is going to undergrad + law school in the general vicinity of the area, good enough for ties? Even if you don't have any family there or have visited the place (it's like an hour drive away from my undergrad).

Like just about every question on this board, the answer is "it depends." In major markets like LA/NYC, ties matter little. And certainly going to school at, for example, NYC or Columbia is enough in the "ties" department for just about any NYC biglaw firm (to the extent they even care about ties).

But in more parochial markets like Seattle, Orange County, San Diego, etc. it might take a bit more than going just to, for example, UCLA/UCLA to get into the Orange County market.