I think if you want to live in Florida or New York then you should look at schools in Florida or New York nowhere else. When you graduate from MSU or something you are going to be in Michigan and I think it is unlikely a Florida Firm will fly out to Lansing Michigan to interview you or spend money to fly you out when there are 7 law schools in Florida. Unless you are independently wealth when you graduate from law school and are studying for the bar money will be tight and it will be a huge hassle expense wise to even get to Florida or New York for an interview. If you are a graduate of Stanford or Harvard or schools of that ilk firms might jump through hoops for you, but if you go to a tier 2, 3, 4 school the local firms will hire you, but nobody outside the region is going to put effort in to seek you out.
The reality is when choosing a law school that location is the most important thing unless you get into an ELITE school i.e Harvard Yale otherwise if you want to live in Florida go to a Florida law school and I would say go FIU, because they have a ridiculously cheap tuition 10k or something and Nova or Stetson would likely open equivalent doors, but you would graduate with 40k less in debt from FIU than the other schools. I never been to Florida and I am speculating, but I really think that would be the best choice if you want to live in Florida.
CUNY would be the best choice in New York with their really cheap tuition. If you got into Columbia or NYU then go there, but otherwise get out as cheap as you can. When I worked in New York plenty of CUNY grads had jobs and worked alongside attorneys that went to NYU, Cardozo, Touro, and Brooklyn and even one NYU guy, but the CUNY guys had less debt which is a huge relief. Notice that out of everybody I mentioend in the New York firm I worked in everybody went to school in New York. The rankings etc outside of the top 25 maybe 50 mean absolutely nothing and if they have any relevance it is superseded by the location of the school.
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