akuperma: Again, things have changed very dramatically from even several years ago.
People who go to lower ranked schools don’t just miss biglaw; they frequently miss all law. You can’t just walk out of law school and hang a shingle; nobody in the world will be your client with no experience. And you won’t be able to get experience because you can’t find even a 2 person shop to hire you on. So the dream of being the guy in the frum neighborhood who does everyone’s home closings is very hard to realize.
jbaldy: I know BTL’s who got into NYU. But, they also got into Harvard. I think NYU is much harder as a BTL than columbia, but is not unattainable.