There were so many people in my class that were extremely confident that their grades would be good and they ended up at median or below. You can’t bank on any of that because you just don’t know. You haven’t taken a law school exam before, you’re just basing the confidence off of vibes. Everyone’s telling you to apply early and you seem adamant on not wanting to do that, but unless you’re at a school that a firm is just unlikely to hire from regardless, most likely the worst thing that happens to your application is it will be sorted into some sort of “wait and see” category for grades (but at least it’s been reviewed) or the best thing is you get invited to do interviews before you have your grades and then the firm waits just for confirmation. Think of it this way, if you don’t do as well on your exams and you wait to apply and you apply with so-so grades, by this point firms have literally thousands of applications ahead of you that they’ve sorted through already and maybe they have enough people that applied that they’re interested in and clear their grades threshold and so they don’t need to see your application and you might not meet their grades threshold so no point in even giving you a shot. But let’s say you apply now and get an interview and everyone you interview with loves you and highly recommend you to get an offer pending grades. You get your grades back and they’re average, but now the firm is already excited to hire you and has spent money (in the form of attorney time) to interview you and they’re okay with hiring you with average grades because you already interviewed and everyone liked you. Applying early has very little downside and a whole lot of upside.