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1L with an upcoming in-person callback in the South. Very far away from my school. Have had two callbacks before this (1 w/ offer, 1 pending), both virtual. Are in-person callbacks more likely to lead to an offer(since they cost the firm significantly more in airfare/lodging/food/etc)? Or is this completely uncharted waters? IK this is very much like trying to read tea leaves, but I want to think about something other than the commerce clause.

Nope, no meaningful difference. Firms spend a lot of money on recruiting. Deciding to bring one candidate in for in-person interviews is a drop in the bucket of their overall recruiting costs and does not imply anything about your candidancy. The recruiting partner is not going to think "Well, I'm not sure about this particular person, but we did spend money flying them in so I guess we should give them an offer otherwise the money goes to waste."

Less a positive, more a necessity for regional firms who want to know you're committed.

Your likelihood of a post-callback offer depends on the number of candidates interviewed for each available spot. In biglaw, 2:1 is common, but there's a lot of variation. Firm A doing virtual callbacks while Firm B does in-person callbacks doesn't mean you're more likely to get a post-callback offer from Firm B, because it has nothing to do with either firm's ratio. It's conceivable that some firms might have decided that the savings on travel costs from going virtual meant that they could go from 2:1 to 4:1 or something like that, but I don't know of anyone who actually has. The additional wasted partner and attorney time to interview all those extra people isn't worth it.

If a firm is offering only in-person callbacks to some candidates and only virtual callbacks to others, then that could indicate a difference in how they perceive those candidates. But I've never heard of anyone doing that, and I don't think that was your question here.

Keep in mind that pre-Covid, in-person callbacks were absolutely the norm and firms didn’t hesitate to fly candidates around the country. So this probably says more about the firm not liking the virtual format (or maybe its take on COVID) than anything to do with how they feel about you.