Invoking static method through an uninitialized pointer

Question

I came upon some old code which uses a rather strange method for calling a static function of a class:

Class definition and implementation

class MyClass
{
public:
  ...
  static MyClass *GetFromString(const char *string);
  ...
};


MyClass *MyClass::GetFromString(const char *string)
{
   ...
}

Calling of GetFromString in the old code

  MyClass *pClass = pClass->GetFromString("TEST");

IMO the proper way would be this

  pClass = MyClass::GetFromString("TEST");

In the first method it looks as if we dereference an uninitialized this pointer, but as the GetFromString method is static, the this pointer is actually not needed and the code works.

What does the standard say ? Is the first method correct or could it lead to undefined behaviour with some compilers ?

I'm not sure if this is a duplicate of this SO question because I explicitly mean static member functions.