<p>I just finished five years as a judicial clerkships advisor. All things being equal, a fancy undergrad helps, especially with the more elite courts and judges. I wouldn’t let this be a dispositive factor when choosing a college, of course, but it can play a role.</p>
<p>“I think that if you go from Harvard UG to a less-selective law school (and all but a very few law schools are less selective than Harvard) it makes you look like an underachiever”</p>
<p>I had a only a couple of friends from Harvard undergrad who ended up at law schools outside the top 14. One went to BU, another to Rutgers-Newark. Career-wise, both have outperformed the expectations for those law schools. They also had good grades in law school, so there’s no reason to think the undergrad cachet is the reason they are having strong careers, but there’s also no reason to think that it was held against them.</p>