It's March, and plenty of lawyers across the land are tracking their NCAA men's basketball tournament brackets almost as diligently as they check their case dockets. But chances are most are far from achieving the perfect bracket.

Then again, most lawyers aren't Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman associate Meghan Hammond.

Hammond, a junior associate in the firm's energy practice in Washington, D.C., has nailed 46 out of 48 matchups thus far in Politico Playbook's NCAA pool. At one point, she was one of eight people across the country with a perfect bracket.

Meghan Claire Hammond

The American Lawyer caught up with Hammond to talk about her pick strategy and who she has winning the whole tournament. (Hint: it's where she got her undergrad degree.)

Do you follow the tournament every year?

I do. I'm a big basketball fan. I moved to Miami the same day that LeBron James decided to take his talents to South Beach, so I was like, “I guess I better get into basketball now.”

Have you ever been this successful with your picks?  

[Laughs] No, definitely not. I fill out brackets every year. I filled out four brackets this year, and I was doing really well on ESPN, but when [Louisiana State University] won, I lost that perfect bracket. Then I realized I had a bracket on Politico that was still perfect, and then it stayed perfect.

I think at one point I was one of 8 people in the country who had a perfect bracket left, and then I lost out in the Villanova game, so I had 38 correct picks in a row. I think the most ever up to that point had been 39, but right now there's still one guy out there who has a perfect bracket.

You're 46 out of 48 heading into the Sweet Sixteen, which is pretty remarkable. What sort of strategy did you have for your picks?

There's always a 5-12 upset, so for this bracket, I just picked all of the 5-12 upsets except for Auburn.

And then—this is a funny lawyer story—I had dinner with a client earlier in the week who was a big fan of the Oregon Ducks. I said, let me look at the Oregon Ducks, and then I was like, “oh my gosh they're on this huge winning streak,” so I had them going pretty deep into the Elite Eight. We'll see if they beat Virginia on Thursday.

I went to undergrad in Tennessee so I'm a big Tennessee fan. My grandfather went to college at Wofford so that's why I picked Wofford to win when I don't think anybody saw that coming.

So it's not so much that I'm a basketball savant, as it's kind of a Slumdog Millionaire kind of thing. [Laughs] It's a confluence of forces. I looked at the picks, I looked at the Nate Silver blog, and then I kind of just went with my gut.

Who do you have going all the way?

I have the University of Tennessee in the finals. They have a great team this year!