Attend a tier 3 or tier 4 school, while considering the cost differenece?

For the most part, the important thing is the diploma, not the college you got it from. There are some exceptions for if the university is well-known as a great school, like the Ivy Leagues, Stanford, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Northwestern, and public Ivies like University of Michigan, University of Colorado at Boulder, Penn State, William and Mary, and over half of the University of California locations. There are also some exceptions for an otherwise unknown school having, say, a really good psychology program that people hiring new psychologists will know about. But for the most part, there’s no reason to spend those extra thousands of dollars if the cheaper school does what you need it to do. I know tons of kids who got their first liberal arts bachelors at my state’s public Ivy, found that it didn’t help much and they still spent 10 years waiting tables afterwards, and are now getting their second bachelors in something useful at the cheaper state colleges.

The rankings have also come under quite a bit of criticism, mostly that they put wealth, prestige, and selectivity over actual quality of programs. And both colleges cost a lot of money for not being really highly ranked.

I say this as a guy with a degree from a Tier 3 school:

Unless the legal market significantly improves (and it won’t), I’d say no. Don’t bother. There’s not that much difference between those two schools. Transferring into a T14 school is one thing, but unless you’re doing that, you’re just bouncing around pointlessly.