The Law School Rankings Shuffle

The U. S. News & World Report “Best Law Schools 2013″ is out – and there’s a bit of shuffling around in some of the top spots and a few big jumps elsewhere.

Yale remains ranked #1 (holding the spot since 1990), Stanford moves up to the #2 spot (from #3) and Harvard moves to #3 (Harvard held the #2 spot since 2007 and Stanford had jointly held the #2 spot with Harvard in 2008 and 2009).

There was also some shuffling within the Top 14 (T14).  According to a U.S. News post:  “The University of California—Berkeley School of Law and the University of Virginia School of Law both moved up two spots to tie with the University of Pennsylvania Law School for 7th, while the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor Law School slid from 7th to 10th; Cornell Law School, now ranked 14th, and the Georgetown Law Center, at 13th, switched spots from last year’s list.”

Other notable news includes:

 

Here are the top 20-ranked law schools:

1) Yale University

2) Stanford University

3) Harvard University

4) Columbia University

5) University of Chicago

6) New York University

7) University of California at Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia (tied)

10) University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

11) Duke University Law School

12) Northwestern Law School

13) Georgetown Law School

14) Cornell Law School

15) UCLA Law School

16) University of Texas, Austin, Vanderbilt (tied)

18) University of Southern California, Gould

19) University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

20) George Washington University Law School

So, what do the numbers really mean?  Hear directly from Robert Morse, Director of Data Research for U. S. News & World Report in our podcast, Law School Rankings: What Do the Numbers Mean?