Good post. And yes, there's a separate discussion there as to the difference between "Ivy leaguer with a fancy resume" and "local kid who thinks on his/her feet and busts ass." Malcolm Gladwell would agree with you. I know some mediocre Yale lawyers, and some damned fine Texas Tech lawyers. I sure don't judge a lawyer I'll be facing based on where they went to school.
But all of that said, we don't hire from the Ivy league, and even then we have to be diligent and make an effort to seek out quality minority candidates who might be overlooked. Yeah, a black lawyer in the top 10 at UT can write their ticket anywhere, in part BECAUSE they are a black lawyer in the top 10 at UT. But the pool of minorities even going to law school is still below the population ratio, if for no other reason than minorities have a lower number of mentors in their community and family who went to law school. We have been working with a program aimed at helping with that -- geared towards helping first-gen college students and such, mostly but not entirely minorities, get introduced to law school and the legal world. But we won't be able to do so much longer, because that program got the axe because of Texas's new anti-DEI law. Again.....all that program did was reach students who wouldn't otherwise have much exposure to the legal world, but we had to kill it. Because we are stupid and mean.