<p>Law school admissions is mostly about the #s. It's possible to get into any law school from any accredited college. That said, it's simply not true that all law schools use exactly the same criteria and apply them in the same way. They don't. There are applicants who get into Yale and not Harvard, though in general it's easier to get into Harvard and MOST people who get into Yale who applied to Harvard are admitted to Harvard as well. </p>
<p>Other factors do count--nowhere near as much as LSAT and GPA, but they do count. While my evidence is anecdotal, everyone I know who submitted a rec from a TA/TF rather than a prof got rejected at Yale Law, no matter how good their #s. It didn't matter, BTW, if they attended Harvard. The rec doe NOT have to be from a full prof or a famous prof. It's just that if you've spent four years at a college and don't have anyone other than a grad student who knows you well enough to write a rec, and you don't have some other <em>star</em> experience--say serving in Iraq or spending a few years in the Peace Corps in a remote village, you won't get into Yale Law. </p>
<p>So, IMO, if you want to maximize your chances of admission, the best bet is to attend a top LAC. Williams and Amherst do amazingly well in terms of the % of the class that gets into top law schools. I suspect that's because nearly all of their grads can get two profs who know them well to write recs. If you're the sort of person who is going to be the only one whose name a prof who teaches a lecture class of 350 is going to remember (for good reasons) then it probably doesn't matter. But remember, it's NOT the quality of your written work that's going to matter if you go to a university at which grad students (or upper classmen) do the grading. </p>
<p>There's another aspect of this that hasn't been mentioned and that's the candidate with a stellar gpa and good but not stellar LSAT. Now, I know people who graduated PBK from HYP--so they were in the top 10% of their class---who did not get into YHS Law School and the reason was quite obviously a mediocre LSAT. But, while I can't "prove" it, a 3.9 with a 165 LSAT from Harvard, from what I've seen, is going to do quite a bit better in the law school admissions process than a 3.9 from SUNY Oswego with a 165.
If the SUNY kid has a 176 LSAT, he will do better than the Harvard kid with a 165. </p>
<p>But, personally, I'd recommend that folks who know themselves to be stellar students who just don't do as well on standardized tests go to as good a college as they can, as long as it's one where their performance in the classroom will be rewarded with stellar recs from profs.</p>
<p>Conversely, if you know you are likely to score above a 175 on the LSAT and know that you'll be a star student at a second tier U., you're likely to do very well in the admissions process and then will firmly insist that the undergrad you attend makes no difference in the LS admissions process.</p>