The U.S. News just published a preview of its 2024 Best Law School Rankings. And there weren’t many surprises. Stanford Law moved up from the second rank to tie Yale University for the top spot. Columbia Law dropped from the fourth rank to the eighth, Georgetown Law fell out of the top-14, and UCLA moved up from the 15th rank to take Georgetown’s place.
There were some notable updates to U.S. News’ methodology, however, which the news organization said were based upon the input of over 100 law deans and legal experts. Some of the named changes include: an increase in the weight given to the bar pass rate and the addition of the “ultimate bar pass pass rate” (the bar pass rate of a graduating class two years post-grad); an increase in the weight given to employment ten months post-graduation; changes to the credit assigned for students entering into fellowships or graduate school post-graduation; and a significant reduction in the weight given to reputation surveys, LSAT/GRE scores, and median GPA scores.
Briefly addressing the controversy, U.S. News explained that it ranked all schools using publicly available data, and removed some of the metrics that were not available (e.g. expenditures, at-graduation employment rate, and JD graduate indebtedness).
The U.S. News plans to publish the full methodology, including measures and weights, alongside the complete rankings, on April 18.
Rank School Name
1 Stanford University (tie)
1 Yale University (tie)
3 University of Chicago
4 Harvard University (tie)
4 University of Pennsylvania (Carey) (tie)
6 Duke University (tie)
6 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