In regards to the JD:
I would say the #1 mistake people make when going into this field is making a decision based on what type of job they think they are going to get, without weighing that against what type of work they will have to do. For example: I remember reading articles in Forbes about tax attorneys that were billing out at over $1000 per hour. When you run some calculations, that sounds very attractive. But then you take tax law, and you realize that your life will end up revolving around the Internal Revenue Code. You can google it and try reading it yourself. It's miserable for most people.
I would say you should ONLY go into this field if you love reading legal cases (and I don't mean news articles you read, I mean judicial decisions). Your employment will depend on your 1L grades, and your 1L year is nearly 100% litigation and cases from centuries ago. You will be reading about cows in Contracts, Railroads in Civil Procedure, and Foxes in Property. The thinking is completely outdated, and I think the most analogous type of reasoning is that you would find in a philosophy class. If you are anything like me, you will be shocked to learn that you will spend a week learning about how a semicolon works. No joke.
Your admission to a top law school is going to depend on your LSAT, which is preposterous to me since I think the only thing on the LSAT that overlaps with law school is reading comp. If you don't like reading those passages in less than a minute, you won't like law school because you will be reading hundreds of pages each night of just-as-dry or drier material.
Now, if you can't imagine yourself working a 30k law job, then don't go into law. I think the people that are the most successful are the ones that buy into how lawyers think and reason, and believe in the system. You won't likely be getting a firm job your 1L summer, so you will have to put up with clerking or some other pro bono legal aid work. If you don't like that, you won't succeed (or will have to endure torture to succeed). Those that end up getting good jobs are the ones that loved their summers clerking for some obscure court somewhere, and writing pointless law review articles that will end up making no impact on our judiciary.
Now, if you can score above a 170 on the LSAT, have a good GPA, and can get into a T-5--AND you love law school work--then I would say go for it. If you miss the T-5, but end up in the T-14 (like I did), I would say you can still get a good job, but you will have to work a lot harder. If you end up outside of the T-14, same thing, but it gets harder and harder the further down the rankings you go. I know people that went to Southwestern Law School and got jobs at top firms like O'Melveny, but they were #1 in their class--and they were absolutely not the norm. Get ready for non-corporate, non-firm work if you are outside the T-14 and didn't kill your 1L year (and don't have contacts).
Since your dad is a lawyer, that may help. You basically need someone with influence over the hiring committee. I know people that were average students, but their dad was the hiring partner of a huge firm. Guess where they got their job? Besides having that type of paternal connection, that guy you once met at a cocktail party isn't going to help.
I believe law school apps are down because news is trickling out of the lack of employment in big law. Keep in mind when you read a school's statistics, please make sure to clarify what the percentages represent. Schools have been sued over misrepresenting firm employment when they really counted every type of job out there. There are people that ended up going into non-related fields, and schools counted that as employment.
Look for big-firm employment statistics.
If I could re-do it again, I would get an MBA if I got into a top-5. I know many more MBAs that got jobs than lawyers. And this is coming from a T-14 school.
Law school is nearly perfect for that humanities major in undergrad who finished a year early, and has no shot at any other type of job. They can graduate by the age of 25, and start their careers and hopefully make partner in 10 years by the age of 35. At a top 20 firm, that should put you near or over 1 million per year. But unfortunately, the reality is more like being passed over for partner and/or burning out, and making lateral moves until you find a firm that has a good balance of life + work.
In sum, being a lawyer is not what you see on TV, or what your image of it was from the outside. If you have a scientific mindset, a lot of legal reasoning is going to sound like BS to you. If you are good at things like finance, you probably are more mathematically/scientifically inclined. You will be completely surprised when you get to law school. Everything is qualitative. You will be using the word "reasonable" in every other sentence you write. The question is how much you can put up with to reach your goal of a big law job.
Also, besides legal writing and research, and maybe some upper level classes like Securities Regulation, don't expect to learn anything of value in law school. By the same token, if you need a lawyer, never hire a first-year associate, as they have no idea what they are doing and you are likely paying for them to learn. So if you are going to law school hoping that these skills will help if you decide to go into business, don't. You might gain a little knowledge, but it certainly won't be worth $200,000 + and 3 years of your life. Law school for people that want to go into business is complete overkill. Just go into business, and take a business law class. If anything, law school might shake your confidence in deals because you will learn that there is almost always an argument for the other side, and that over 90% of cases end in settlements.
Also with regards to your confidence in getting straight As in law school, keep this in mind: your grades are based on 1 final per class. Nothing else. Each final is a 3-4 hour long series of 1-5 essays. It is open-book most of the time, but you, and all your classmates are writing from notes you took from class. Lots of people share notes, so many essays look the same. Distinguishing yourself out of the crowd is extremely rare. If you want a sample, here is a conlaw case you are sure to read. It's a little on the lighter side for your typical case:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0317_0111_ZO.html
I think when we read this, it was one of maybe 10 cases for the assignment for that night. x (3-4) classes. And that's a fair rep of your work load for the night.
In sum: only go into law if you love the law and believe in the system.
The best ROIs I have seen in terms of educations have been undergrad finance degrees, particularly ones from the Ivy Leagues. My cousin went to UPenn undergrad, and was making between 100-200k his FIRST year out of undergrad. I think he was making over 300k in a few years at a hedge fund, possibly more as he was promoted several times.
Some other friends went to Northwestern and Duke. Both finance majors. they eventually got married. Duke became a derivatives trader on wall street making 700k per year, and Northwestern went to JP Morgan as an analyst making 300k. Combined income of over 1 mil per year from 4 years of undergrad, at the age of 28.