Too late for a big law job?

[SodiumChloride]

I apologize for the long read. My wife is a 3L at a mid-30s ranked public law school. She didn't get an internship in the summer after her 1L year so she was unable to get a big law internship as a 2L. She had a great internship in Germany (she can function in German professionally) this summer and is doing a very solid externship right now with a federal agency.

She didn't initially think she was big law caliber because her GPA is 3.45 (top 33% class rank), but she wrote for a journal and is fluent (nearly native) in both Spanish and German. Other than that, her undergrad GPA was 4.0 and she had some great international experience as an undergrad.

She got an interview with a big law firm (thousands applied, 9 made it to the final round of interviews, she is the backup for the 1 person who was selected).

Questions:

1) Are there still going to be big law firms hiring 3Ls, or are they mostly done by now?

2) Should she keep cold-calling firms outside of the local area? She's applied to dozens of jobs that weren't posted by her career services office, with no response.

3) Does she have much of a shot with jobs that are outside her school's area of influence? She's heard that it's hard to get a job in another part of the country if you're from a lower ranked school.

4) Do you guys have any other advice to offer her? We would really appreciate that.

[justanothersucker]

Hey there OldSalt, I see two things worth mentioning here.

1) Never too late to try. Each minute you spend asking if it is too late, is a minute later it is. Just apply and hope for the best. If the ten minutes of ones life isn't worth it if in vein, then it's not worth it anyways and then why even waste the time asking?

2) If it's for your wife, she should be the one asking. If she dosn't have the energy to even ask the question herself, she's already lost.
Do your best to "motivate" her, but some people are "late" applying for things because they don't have the ability not to be(for whatever reason).
If she dosn't want to do it, but dosn't want to admit not wanting to do it, oh well I guess.