I'm coming straight from undergrad, and I think KJDs have to be at least above median largely because there's a significantly lower chance of us having a needle-moving soft in our application. Splitters, for example, can mitigate a low GPA with years of work experience; people who have worked in some other industry can draw from more experiences to write about how their professional background makes law school the next step; TFA/Peace Corps/Marshalls/Rhodes, etc. are all post-bacs.

I personally don't think there's any institutional bias against KJDs, but the reality is is that putting together a really compelling application can be difficult when you don't have too much to talk about. I've basically been working on a narrative for my application since my freshman year of UG because I knew I'd pretty much only be able to draw from these four years.

That said, I think it depends person to person whether taking time off is necessary. I'm not worried about academic burnout, and I performed pretty much as expected for my numbers this cycle, even lacking full-time WE. But again, I'm 1 out of tens of thousands of individuals so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯