You will have to forgive me but I don't know much about the Law profession from an employment perspective. Is their not a way to join a top law firm at an entry level. Below where the good GPA candidates enter and work your way up. It is a foreign concept to me because in the development industry you ascend the ladder by proving yourself. If you are good people will notice in my industry.
As well, what about organizations like the EFF or the ACLU do they have programs where if you join them they help with the debt. I would like to think that they do, but again I don't know much about law employment.
How legal hiring works at big law schools is this: you go through your first year and get your grades. At the beginning of your second year, you interview with big firms. You hopefully get an offer to work at one summer of your second year. You do well that summer and hopefully get an offer.
This is the primary hiring pipeline for all big firms. A much smaller pipeline is lateraling over from another big firm after you've worked there a few years, but still, you need get through this pipeline at some firm.
If you miss this window, you're basically finished in terms of prospects at a big firm. A couple of people manage to pick up a job their third year but its pretty hard (I tried but failed).
It's a really weird system I know. But yeah, there's no way for me to go to a big firm and say "I'll work for free if you give me a shot."
I could do that with much smaller firms but then instead of 160k market salary + high-level, interesting legal work being the end game its more like 40k and much less interesting work.
As to public interest orgs like EFF, if I work at some place like that, then between the federal government program and my school's program I can get some assistance and, after 10 years, get my debt forgiven. I'm looking into this seriously and this is my "backup" plan. 10 years is a long haul for something I'm not too excited about (see post) and at a very low salary, though.
Right which is why, if I where in your shoes I would start down that course and build up experience. Look for problems in the legal profession and think of solutions of how to fix them. Maybe learn some code or find someone that does code that is interested in the legal market. Then build something to fix a problem in that market. You contacts in the industry by the time the 10 years is up will be the key that a developer that is just interested in Law will not have. Look at the 10 years as a plan to utilize your education and by then experience to solve problems in the form of productized solutions. If you hit before the 10 years is up, all the better, you walk from the job and pay the debt with the proceeds from hitting it off. I would imagine that there are not a lot of lawyers turned solution providers, I may be wrong but it seems like after investing that much education most would be looking to directly work in the field.
The legal hiring model is like the opposite of a "let the talent rise" kinda system. It's pretty depressing. If you don't get tracked with a good job early on, good luck with decent-paying private sector work.
Just to throw an idea out there... maybe you could attend a community college part-time and get a degree in something unrelated to law. Since CC's are much less expensive, you could probably swing it without taking out any more loans or anything. And you could take night classes while working at whatever job you have.
Yeah, yeah, I know, but here me out... first, there is nothing wrong with attending a community college. Forget any elitist dogma bullshit you may have been taught growing up, this is about making the best of things, and doing what you have to do. Next, consider this... you have a degree from a prestigious law school... that looks good on your resume no matter what. Even if you don't pursue a law job, you'll get more interviews and find more doors open to you just because you went to $TOPTENLAW.
So... go get a 2 year degree in business administration, or marketing, or computer programming or something that interests you, and you will undoubtedly be able to transition into some other field. Yeah, you might not start out making big bucks from day 1... sorry, but life isn't always fair. But, cynicism aside, the world we live in (at least in the US) is actually moderately meritocratic. If you're good at something, you can work your way to a nice living. Just accept that nothing is going to be handed to you, and that you'll (probably) have to work your ass off. But if you really want to achieve, you can.
Another possibility is to learn to code (as you said, you can teach yourself) and eventually jump into a tech startup.