Um? As I understand it, merit money is pretty uncommon in the top 14, so I don’t think it’s necessarily true that someone who was accepted to Columbia Law would receive a merit offer (let alone “plenty”) from other top schools.
And for a field that is so notoriously prestige-focused and oversupplied, I would think there is certainly a difference between attending a top 5 law school and a top 15 school, as silly and hair-splitting as that sounds.