Hi Scraggle! You have a fabulous background, so aim high! Duke has such a great reputation for literature, oh, and you got a law degree as well. It sounds a bit like my situation (I had to get a Master in Business to realize I didn't want to do anything with it!) with the main difference that your BA is from a well-known university.
If you need any help or feel you need to talk about anything, just post it here or send me a personal message.
I guess the main difference between law school and grad school applications for our fields is the writing sample, on which you should spend enough time. (if you already have a great paper on a topic you'd like to continue working on, even better!) It's also important to find professors who work in your specific area of interest in the schools you apply to. As most applicants have great profiles and all for different reasons, they will usually take out the ones with too low test scores and GPAs somewhere at the beginning (but this really means very low!) and then they'll look what you want to work in and see whether they have professors who specialize in the field. This also means that, sometimes, you don't get admitted for the stupid reason that they admitted someone in your area the year before and want to admit someone with a different interest. So, there are a lot of elements you don't control. There are, however, many elements you DO control and it's your job to work hard on those and then sit back and let them make the decisions.
I'm babbling... anyhow, as I said, any questions...
