Ask HN: Was a dev. Became a lawyer. How do I become a dev again?

I attended a top 5 law school and am currently a first-year in biglaw. Previously, I was a self-taught dev at small startups in LA. Nothing sophisticated, just standard MVC apps. I was mostly back-end (my front-end skills do include JavaScript, but not include CSS or ability to make things look pretty, etc) and I was able to maintain and deploy web apps all on my own. The last thing I did before law school was an accounting app I built from scratch and of which I was functionally the CTO. Technologies I used during my career: Python, NodeJS/TypeScript, C#, React, Postgres.

I want to go back into tech. Assuming I want to be a software developer again:

1. What should I focus on learning to get a backend developer job that pays 180k+ in a major market (NY, LA, or SF)? Things I was starting to find interesting towards the end of the main part of my career include scripting to automate build processes, integration tests, and I guess what one could call crude architectural stuff that probably isn't worth the name (Should I build the data layer using a "repository manager" class for each table and inheritance? At what point is it not over-engineering to bring in a cache?).

Trying to enumerate those examples brought home that I did not do anything remotely sophisticated during my career lol :( Maybe if I don't know the answers to basic questions like that, those are the places to start.

Anyways, what are some of the next big things? One thing I think I might like is natural language processing, maybe I should start there.

2. Suppose I want to throw money at this (since I have some now)--is that even possible? For example, any recommendations for coding interview tutoring (which would be something to do near the end of the transition, after several months or more of self-learning)? I was pretty bad at dev interviews the last time I did them several years ago.

Please note:

Why I went into law in the first place and why I want to jump back into tech is not really something I want to hash out in this thread. Suffice to say, my interest in leaving is not because biglaw is awful or high-pressure or the people are toxic or anything like that, as some might think. I basically got very lucky: I am at one of the best firms in biglaw in terms of work-life balance and cordiality. It's certainly the only one I know of that's like this. My reasons for wanting to go back into tech have more to do with things that I miss about tech and business, such as the creative aspect of working on a product, the mission-orientation, etc. I know some of you will say "reflect on why you stopped wanting to be a dev in the first place", but please suspend that argument for purposes of this thread.

Let's assume for now that my timeline for leaving biglaw is probably about a year hence.

Thanks for all advice in advance.