The U.S. News and World Report has posted the final 2023-2024 Best Law School rankings. And there has been significant change since last year due to the new methodology. Notably, even since the preview released in April, Harvard has dropped one spot and NYU has ticked up one spot to form a three-way tie at the fifth rank with Duke University.
Changes to the T14 from the 2022-2023 rankings include:
Yale shares the top spot with Stanford, which moved up from the second spot in 2022.
UPenn climbed in the rankings from 6th in 2022 to 4th this year.
Harvard dropped from the 3rd spot in last year’s ranking to tie for the 5th spot in 2023 with Duke. Duke moved up five positions from the 10th rank last year.
Columbia dropped from the 4th rank in 2022 to tie for 8th with UVA this year.
Northwestern jumped up two positions moving from 12th in 2022 to tie for 10th alongside UC Berkeley and University of Michigan.
Outside of the T14, highlights include:
USC Gould and the University of Minnesota moved up from the 19th and 22nd ranks last year, respectively, to tie for 16th with Vanderbilt, University of Texas, and University of Minnesota in 2023.
Washington University in St. Louis dropped from the 16th rank last year to tie for 20th with the University of Georgia. Georgia moved up from the 27th rank in 2022.
Ohio State and Wake Forest jumped from the 40th and 41st ranks, respectively, last year, to enter the top 25. They are both part of a five-way tie for 22nd along with Brigham Young, University of Florida, and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Brigham Young moved up to the 22nd rank from 29th last year.
Boston University fell out of the top 25, moving from the 20th rank in 2022 to 29th this year.
Rank School Name
1 Stanford University (tie)
1 Yale University (tie)
3 University of Chicago
4 University of Pennsylvania (Carey) (tie)
5 Duke University (tie)
5 Harvard University (tie)
5 New York University (tie)
8 Columbia University (tie)
8 University of Virginia (tie)
10 Northwestern University (Pritzker) (tie)
10 University of California, Berkeley (tie)
10 University of Michigan—Ann Arbor (tie)
13 Cornell University
14 University of California—Los Angeles
15 Georgetown University
16 University of Minnesota (tie)
16 University of Southern California (Gould)
16 University of Texas--Austin
16 Vanderbilt University
20 University of Georgia
20 Washington University in St. Louis
22 Brigham Young University (Clark)
22 Ohio State University (Moritz)
22 University of Florida (Levin)
22 University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill
22 Wake Forest University