Now a days, footer links are ignore by the search engine because those are not first link on the website. They have very low CTR. So I would say, footer links can and does help you rank a site at some percentage. If you're a web developer who's afraid to take credit for your work, don't fret. If you want to be absolutely safe, and don't need the SEO benefit, go ahead and add a "nofollow" tag to the link.