The 2024-2025 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings are finally out, and they're packed with drama and absurdities.
When the magazine released its provisional rankings to law schools last Wednesday, it discovered that a whopping 80 (!) schools had been ranked incorrectly, including nine that were in the top 50, leading the magazine to publish a corrected ranking the next day. In addition to these errors, law schools that are actively boycotting the rankings are reportedly listed as “participating” when they have only provided public data to US News, which is now the basis for the rankings.
Last week, we provided our readers with an unreleased copy of the U.S. News rankings of the top 25 law schools. Has anything changed since then? Now is the time to find out.
Here is the official list of the top law schools in the country, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report for 2024. Changes in this year's rankings compared to last year were provided courtesy of Mike Spivey of Spivey Consulting.
Here's our updated ranking methodology, which may explain some of the big gains and losses you'll see:
Employment rate: 33% (annual average of last two graduating classes) First-time bar exam pass rate: 18% (annual average of last two graduating classes) Final bar exam pass rate: 7% (annual average of last two graduating classes) Peer assessment: 12.5% (slightly adjusted) Lawyer/Judge assessment: 12.5% (slightly adjusted) LSAT/GRE: 5% UGPA: 4% Pass rate: 1% Student-to-faculty ratio: 5% Library resources: 2%
With that being said, let’s take a look at the prestigious T14, which saw some big moves.
Stanford University 1 – Yale University 1 – University of Chicago 3 – Duke University 4 +1 Harvard University 4 +1 University of Pennsylvania 4 – University of Virginia 4 +4 Columbia University 8 – New York University 9 -4 Northwestern University 9 +1 University of Michigan 9 +1 University of California, Berkeley 12 -2 University of California, Los Angeles 13 +1 Cornell University 14 -1 Georgetown University 14 +1
Well well well, apparently these are the exact same rankings that US News published during the original embargo. Still, there are big changes within the T14, with UVA moving up to 4th and NYU dropping a few spots. There are three ties within the T14 (two in four at 4th, two in three at 9th, and one in one at 14th). At least Georgetown is back at the top of the rankings.
Now, let's look at the law schools outside the T14. As in previous years, we are once again faced with a mixed rankings, with ties, ties and more ties. There are four ties in this segment of the rankings alone (one tie, one three-way tie, one four-way tie, and one five-way tie), and more are on the way. The schools ranked 16th through 28th are:
University of Minnesota 16 – University of Texas at Austin 16 – Washington University in St. Louis 16 +4 Vanderbilt University 19 -3 University of Georgia 20 – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 20 +2 University of Notre Dame 20 +7 University of Southern California 20 -4 Boston University 24 +3 Wake Forest University 25 -3 Ohio State University (Moritz) 26 -4 Texas A&M University 26 +3 Boston College 28 +1 Brigham Young University (Clark) 28 -6 George Mason University (Scalia) 28 +4 University of Florida (Levin) 28 -6 University of Utah (Quinney) 28 +4
The biggest winner here is Notre Dame (up seven spots into the top 20), while BYU and Florida have the biggest losers (both down six spots). George Mason and Utah both rise four spots into the top 30, with UNC also making it into the prestigious top 20. Great.
Now, as for the remaining law schools, which have five ties for the top 48 (notice a trend in these rankings?), as you can see, there has been some big movement here.
Fordham University 33 -4 University of Alabama 33 +2 Washington and Lee University 33 +7 Arizona State University (O'Connor) 36 -4 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 36 +7 University of Iowa 36 -1 University of Wisconsin-Madison 36 +4 William & Mary Law School 36 +9 George Washington University 41 -6 Emory University 42 -7 Indiana University Bloomington (Maurer) 42 +3 Southern Methodist University (Dedman) 42 +3 University of California, Irvine 42 -7 Baylor University 46 +3 University of Kansas 46 -6 Florida State University 48 +8 University of Colorado Boulder 48 +8 University of Washington 48 +1 Villanova University (Widger) 48 -5
The biggest winners here are the College of William and Mary (+9), Florida State University (+8), University of Colorado (+8), University of Illinois (+7), and Washington and Lee University (+7). The biggest losers here are Emory University (-7) and University of California, Irvine (-7). Regardless of what these schools are doing, they'd better do better, because some are on the verge of dropping out of the top 50.
See the rest of the rankings on the next page.
Stacey Zaretsky is a Senior Editor at Above the Law and has worked there since 2011. She would love to hear from you, so feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. X/Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.