u didn't understand...
he'll compete with many people, ivy league grads, and non-ivy grads. what i was trying to stress was that the market was very competitive and people with JD's, especially from prestigious law schools, usually make better candidates so if he wants to improve his chances of getting a well paying job, he should at least pursue an LLM or better yet a JD regarding the money issue-- with an average initial pay of 165k anually in NY's big law firms, the couple grands you pay for school can be payed off in a few months aqfter graduation. That said, if you can't come up with this amount, or can't take out a loan, or not sure if you can find a job when you graduate, and you think you can prepare for the bar exam by yourself, so yeah go ahead and take the bar exam w/o a local law degree