<p>The only way to answer your question would be to find out what your chances of getting a job out of a specific law school are, and in light of the well-documented instances of law schools telling less than the truth about how many of their graduates actually get law jobs, and what those jobs really pay, that’s going to be pretty tough.
You’d also have to ask yourself-how far “under” top 25 would you be willing to go.
But let’s take your hypo, with you trying to live in NYC or Boston or DC, and take the highest ranked local schools below top 25-Fordham, Boston College(both 29), and George Mason(39); you can go much lower if you want, but let’s stick with these three. Proponents of all three insist that “big law”-i.e. high paying-law jobs are available to graduates of all three in their home cities(ok, Geo Mason’s in No VA, but that more or less counts as DC). In the law pedigree of your law degree is everything for the big money jobs-at least at the very beginning of your career-but is there any way to objectively determine how many grads of each school got high-paying jobs? Sadly, no. Numbers produced by schools are untrustworthy, and unemployed law grads rarely like to advertise their unemployment. I would suggest that while it is possible to get high-paying jobs from all three schools, the number of graduates getting those jobs is small indeed, limited to top 25(not top 25percent, but actual top 25, and this may be too generous) with Law Review or similar. If you can guarantee you’ll be there, then it’s worth going to those schools. And right now, I think you’d agree that it’s impossible to make that guarantee. When I interviewed for jobs in law school a long time ago, the only thing recruiters asked were class rank/GPA, and if I was a member of Law Review; for many, being an editor of LR was required to be considered. I don’t think that’s changed.
The further you get away from the schools with a pedigree, the harder it will be for you to find work, anywhere, in any capacity.
If you don’t know your projected salary, it’s virtually impossible to set a number for supportable debt. And nobody on this forum can tell you what your salary will be after law school, or tell you what your comfort level with debt is. The only thing you can decide is whether you want to go to law school, knowing that your job prospects-and hence ability to pay debt-will be directly related to 1. the brand name of the law school you attend and 2. how much you’ll be making on graduation(which is directly related to #1, and how well you do at that school).
And since it’s extemely difficult to get reliable law school graduate employment/salary data, it really is a roll of the dice. Where you go to school, and how well you do there, will play a big roll in employability/salary, but there are no guarantees of a great salary-or even employment-after graduating from law school(see statement made by president of the ABA in this regard).
And if you’re wondering where this all potentially leads, check out “law jobs” on your local webpage that ends with “list”; I’m looking at the DC board now; it’s got a document review job posted for licensed attorneys paying $27/hour. They will get plenty of resumes.</p>