Introduction
The 2024 U.S. News & World Report Best Law Schools ranking has been announced three days ago on April 9, 2024. This year’s ranking came as a surprise to many, since it was riddled with ties and a few unusual leaps.
Similar to the last year’s ranking, Stanford Law School and Yale Law School came out on top, but it had a twist: the evaluators decided that these two were in a tie. The University of Chicago Law School was selected as the third following the top two.
The well-established top 14 schools (T14 so to speak) had a dramatic shift this year. For example four schools share a tie for the fourth place. Meanwhile, the New York University School of Law slid down four places to the ninth place and had a tie with two other schools.
Methodology
The much-awaited list’s methodology has also shifted after many law schools skipped participating in U.S. News & World Report’s survey. The panel explains in its website that the rankings are designed to help future law school students. It is further explained that the rankings only assess academic quality and graduate success, which are factors that are universally important to prospective students. It is specifically noted that personal considerations involving location, campus culture, strength of specific programs and financial aid are not taken into account for the purposes of these rankings.
According to the panel, the following factors have been taken into account for this year’s rankings:
- Outcomes 10 months after graduation (weighted 33%)
- Bar passage rate for first-time test-takers (18%)
- Ultimate bar passage rate (7%)
- Peer assessment score (12.5%)
- Lawyers and judge assessment score (12.5%)
- Median LSAT and GRE scores (5%)
- Median undergraduate grade point average (4%)
- Acceptance rate (1%)
- Student-faculty ratio (5%)
- Library resource (2%)
Ranking
Summary
The annual law school ranking of U.S. News & World Report was once seen as the Bible to guide aspiring lawyers choose where to apply. However this year’s results received a fair amount of criticism and skepticism. Indeed a separate Kaplan survey indicated that 37% of the surveyed students thought it would a be a “positive development for both law schools and applicants to no longer have rankings at all”, while 53% disagreed with this statement and 10% of the students were unsure according to the press release.
In my opinion, the law school rankings prepared by U.S. New & World Report should still be taken into account by future law school students. Having said that, it should be borne in mind that these rankings always have a margin of error. According to my personal opinion, a bright student in any of the top 15 schools would easily outcompete an average student of one of the top 3 schools.
Can Ergur