Ask Noah About First Year of Law School, Getting inTop 10%, Law Review

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I would just add that there is another reason to go to an elite law school if you get a chance: there is no guarantee that you will prove to be good at taking law school exams and getting good grades. Believe it or not, it is a very specific skill and often quite arbitrary. The whole "go to a lower tier school and get great grades" can work just fine, but it can backfire if it turns out you don't pick up quickly on the very delicate art of taking law school exams.

I know very smart people -- who were very accomplished before and after law school -- who could never do all that well on law school exams. I can happen to you almost no matter how smart you are -- it's a bit of a lottery.

Go to a great school, and even if you suck you are going to land just fine though. It's not a bad insurance policy.

It looks like things worked out just as planned for the OP, but it's worth considering the downside.

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Seconded. I had very little ambition regarding law school. I simply decided I wanted to go to one of three specific law schools, and didn't even try for anything higher. Other than a couple hours on practice problems, didn't study for the LSAT. I got a 165, and think I probably could have done better with some work. W/ that and a 3.75 GPA I could easily get into the schools I wanted to get into.

Anyway, even at the top of my class in a top 100 school things just simply weren't as easy as they could have been if I had gone to a higher ranked school. Maybe I would have ranked lower, but I doubt I would have ranked SIGNIFICANTLY lower. Luckily, I still have very little "ambition" for the things a higher ranked school would have helped me with (e.g., turned down a BigLaw job for a small firm job that paid quite a bit less; only applied for local clerkships), but if you have any ambition at all, you need to go as high as you can.