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When I picked a law school some 30 years ago, I didn’t engage in a very thoughtful decision-making process. I consulted the Best Law Schools ranking of U.S. News & World Report, then picked the highest-ranked school of the ones that admitted me.
That was Yale Law School, the number-one school in the annual U.S. News rankings since their inception in 1990. But in the 2026 ranking, which just came out, Yale is no longer at the top.
Stanford Law School is now the nation’s leading law school, according to U.S. News. Stanford tied with Yale for the top spot in 2025, 2024, and 2023—but this year, Stanford stands alone.
I can’t say I’m surprised. In fact, back in 2024, I predicted that “at some point in the next few years, Stanford will be an undisputed #1.”1
University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller—author of Law School Docket, a Substack newsletter about legal education—wasn’t surprised either. Back in December, he also predicted that Stanford would displace Yale, based on analyzing some of the data collected by the American Bar Association that U.S. News relies on in putting together its ranking.
Yale didn’t fall far; it’s now #2, tied with the University of Chicago. The law schools of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia tied for #4. Harvard, a top-three school for most of the history of the rankings, landed at #6 (unchanged from last year).
What factors explain the year-to-year shifts in schools’ ranks? “Because 58 percent of the rankings turn on employment outcomes and bar exam passage, the bulk of changes can be explained by those metrics,” Muller told me in an interview.
Indeed, Stanford overtaking Yale can be attributed, at least in part, to the schools’ employment numbers. If you look at the employment data for their 2024 graduates, 98.4 percent of Stanford’s 199 graduates had full-time, long-term employment (or were enrolled in other graduate studies, which U.S. News treats as equivalent to full-time, long-term employment when calculating employment scores). Meanwhile, for Yale’s 215 graduates, the comparable figure was 96.2 percent.
The difference between 98.4 percent and 96.2 percent might seem small. But when schools are so close to each other, as Stanford and Yale are, “little changes can make the difference,” Muller said.2
Stanford also benefited from its high bar passage rate. If you compare the bar passage rates for Stanford and Yale, you’ll see they’re very close—both north of 95 percent. But as Muller explained, the U.S. News methodology gives schools more points in the scoring system when their graduates pass a state bar with a lower passage rate. This benefits Stanford, because its top bar jurisdiction (California) has a lower bar passage rate than Yale’s (New York).
Looking at the bigger picture, one might ask: Who cares? Do the U.S. News rankings still matter?
Some research suggests that they’re not as important as they used to be, with students focused increasingly—and understandably—on factors such as cost.3 But even if they might not be as influential as they were in my day, the U.S. News rankings are far from irrelevant.
“Of course the rankings matter,” said Muller. “They’re a factor that students consider—even if more and more students are focusing on other considerations, such as cost or employment outcomes.”
And should the rankings matter? Over the years, they’ve received plenty of criticism—including from the deans of Yale and Harvard Law, who in 2022 stopped providing U.S. News with certain data that the outlet required from the schools for its ranking. (After more than 60 schools joined this boycott, U.S. News changed its methodology so it would no longer need the schools’ cooperation.)4
The year-to-year shifts in rank—and even Stanford overtaking Yale, which will garner plenty of attention and headlines—honestly don’t mean much.5 But Muller made a case for the utility of the rankings as a whole.
“They should matter, at least a little bit,” he said. “Even if you might quibble with where a specific school stands, the rankings give you a rough sense of where schools stand. There are overall tiers or buckets that schools fall into, and these generally align with both common perception and employment outcomes.”6
I agree. I don’t think students should treat the rankings as the be-all and end-all, as I did three decades ago. But students shouldn’t ignore the rankings either—especially given that other participants in the legal ecosystem, such as partners hiring associates and judges seeking clerks, do consider them.7
And for better or worse, the legal profession is obsessed with prestige, so where you went to law school tends to matter more than where you went to college. Over the years, I have heard members of the profession comment negatively on where a lawyer went to law school—even if that lawyer graduated decades ago.
Michael Orey, director of public affairs at New York University School of Law, knows the rankings well. Last month, he published a novel centered around them, Dean’s List—focused on a new law school dean’s (seemingly impossible) mission of making his institution a top-five school within a year.
The novel satirizes the obsession that some administrators have with the U.S. News rankings. As Orey said in an interview, he decided to write a novel about the rankings after noticing that within academia, they’re often at the “very top of people’s minds,” which he found “interesting and at times absurd and, ultimately, fairly amusing.”
But even as someone who pokes fun at the rankings, Orey does see value in them.
“The world is a better place with more information,” he said. “And rankings are part of that.”
Here’s more granular commentary about the 2026 Best Law Schools ranking of U.S. News. Let’s start with the T14—this year the T15, thanks to a two-way tie at #13 (with changes from the 2025 U.S. News ranking noted parenthetically):
(1) Stanford University (-)
(2) University of Chicago (+1)
(2) Yale University (-1)
(4) University of Pennsylvania (Carey) (+1)
(4) University of Virginia (-)
(6) Harvard University (-)
(7) Duke University (-1)
(7) New York University (+1)
(9) Columbia University (+1)
(9) Northwestern University (Pritzker) (+1)
(9) University of Michigan—Ann Arbor (-1)
(12) Vanderbilt University (+2)
(13) Cornell University (+5)
(13) University of California—Los Angeles (-1)
(13) Washington University in St. Louis (+1)
Some observations:
Congratulations to Stanford on its status as the undisputed #1 school—look Ma, no tie!—and to Chicago and Penn, which rose to #2 and #4, respectively.
Harvard kept its #6 spot—its all-time lowest ranking—while Duke dropped a spot, so it’s no longer tied with HLS.
Cornell, which shockingly dropped out of the T14 last year, climbed five spots, clawing its way back into that grouping.
Two other members of the traditional T14, UC Berkeley and Georgetown, dropped three and four spots to land at #16 and #18, respectively. This is the first time Berkeley hasn’t been in the T14. But as Dean Erwin Chemerinsky told Law.com, “Berkeley Law is one of the great law schools in the world,” according to multiple metrics; the shift does “not reflect[] any actual changes in the school”; and he has “long been skeptical of rankings, whether they show us well or poorly.”
Three schools that aren’t part of the traditional T14—Vanderbilt (#12), UCLA (#13), and WashU (#13)—made it into the club this year.
Is it time to retire the T14 designation? Unlike 10, 20, or 50, the number 14 is pretty random. The T14 became a thing only because for many years, the same 14 schools appeared in the top 14 spots of the U.S. News rankings—simply trading places among themselves, and rarely joined by outsiders.
This year, however, marks the fifth consecutive year that the rankings haven’t featured the conventional T14 schools in the top 14 spots, all by themselves. In light of this, Professor Derek Muller told me that it’s time to ditch this designation.
“The T14 should be dead,” he said. “People keep using it, but there is no longer that lock.”
“In the past, certain aspects of the U.S. News methodology worked to ensconce those 14 schools, making it difficult for anyone else to break in,” he explained. “But thanks to recent methodological changes, that’s no longer the case. The metrics are now much more compressed, and some of the categories that go into the ranking are very volatile. We’re no longer going to see the consistency we once did—so it’s time for the T14 to be retired as a label.”8
[UPDATE (4/12/2026, 11:34 p.m.): For an incisive analysis of the T14 concept—and why it definitely needs to die—see this Volokh Conspiracy post by Professor Stuart Benjamin, The US News T14 Is Dead, and Has Been Replaced by the T11 (or, if You Prefer, the T10 with 11 Members).]
Moving beyond the T14, T15, or whatever you want to call them, here are the schools that make up the rest of the top 50 (actually 51 this year, because of a three-way tie for #49):
(16) University of California, Berkeley (-3)
(16) University of Texas—Austin (-2)
(18) Georgetown University (-4)
(18) University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill (-)
(20) Boston College (+5)
(20) University of Notre Dame (-)
(22) Texas A&M University (-)
(22) University of Minnesota (-2)
(24) Boston University (-2)
(24) Brigham Young University (Clark) (+4)
(26) George Washington University (+5)
(26) University of Georgia (-4)
(26) University of Southern California (Gould) (-)
(26) University of Wisconsin—Madison (+2)
(30) Ohio State University (Moritz) (-2)
(30) Wake Forest University (-4)
(32) George Mason University (Scalia) (-1)
(32) University of Iowa (+4)
(34) Baylor University (+9)
(34) Florida State University (+4)
(34) University of California—Irvine (+4)
(34) University of Florida (Levin) (+4)
(34) Washington and Lee University (+2)
(34) William & Mary Law School (-3)
(40) Emory University (-2)
(40) University of Alabama (-9)
(42) Fordham University (-4)
(42) Southern Methodist University (Dedman) (+1)
(44) Arizona State University (O’Connor) (+1)
(44) University of Utah (Quinney) (-13)
(46) Pepperdine University (Caruso) (+9)
(46) University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (+2)
(46) University of Kansas (+4)
(49) Indiana University—Bloomington (Maurer) (-3)
(49) Temple University (Beasley) (+1)
(49) Villanova University (Widger) (-1)
Some observations:
Congratulations to the five schools in the top 50 that moved up by five or more spots: Cornell (+5), BC (+5), GW (+5), Baylor (+9), and Pepperdine (+9). Over the past two years, two of these schools made double-digit gains, GW (+15) and Baylor (+12).
Condolences to the two schools in the top 50 that moved down by five or more spots, the University of Alabama (-9) and the University of Utah (-13).
The following schools fell out of the top 50:
(52) University of California—Davis (-2)
(52) University of Washington (-2)
(54) University of Colorado—Boulder (-8)
(58) University of Connecticut (-8)
The four schools that fell out of the top 50 were all state schools, and overall, state schools fared poorly in this year’s ranking. If you take last year’s top 50 as your starting point, 16 public law schools collectively lost 64 spots in the rankings: UMich (-1), UCLA (-1), Berkeley (-3), UT Austin (-2), Minnesota (-2), Georgia (-4), Ohio State (-2), George Mason/Scalia (-1), William & Mary (-3), Alabama (-9), Utah (-13), IU Maurer (-3), UC Davis (-2), University of Washington (-2), UC Boulder (-8), and UConn (-8). Nine state schools—half as many—collectively gained 26 spots: Wisconsin (+2), Iowa (+4), FSU (+4), UC Irvine (+4), UF Levin (+4), Arizona State (+1), Illinois (+2), Kansas (+4), and Temple (+1). [UPDATE (9:59 a.m.): This discussion was revised after a commenter helpfully pointed out to me that Temple is also a public law school.]
Beyond the top 50, there was much more volatility, as is typically the case. The following schools gained 10 or more spots: Miami (+22), SUNY Buffalo (+12), Arkansas—Fayetteville (+15), Brooklyn (+12), Washburn (+13), Howard (+10), Louisville (+22), South Texas (+10), Elon (+14), University of the Pacific (+11), Widener (+15), and University of San Francisco (+10).
And the following schools dropped by 10 or more spots: University of Arizona (-11), University of Cincinnati (-11), UNLV (-12), University of St. Thomas (-11), Lewis & Clark (-13), University of New Mexico (-10), Samford (-15), IU McKinney (-17), Cleveland State (-15), UNH (-11), Northern Illinois (-11), Ave Maria (-11), Willamette (-18), CUNY (-15), and UMass Dartmouth (-10).
For the complete ranking of all 194 law schools, check out U.S. News, and for additional reporting and analysis, see stories at Law.com (by Christine Charnosky), Above the Law (by Staci Zaretsky), and Law School Docket (by Derek Muller).
What jumps out at you as interesting? How did your alma mater fare? Please feel free to share any thoughts in the comments (which are open to all readers, not just paid subscribers, on this Notice & Comment post). Thanks!
Earlier:
What does Yale have to say for itself? Alden Ferro, interim director for Public Affairs at Yale Law School, issued a statement to Law.com: “Yale Law School is focused on providing a rigorous and excellent legal education and increasing access and opportunity to law school and the profession. We are proud to have sparked a movement away from these rankings four years ago.”
As a technical matter, the U.S. News methodology is more complicated than this—it takes into account employment outcomes for the class of 2023 as well as the class of 2024, for example—but this discussion captures the gist of why SLS trumped YLS.
In a study published last year by Kaplan, the test-prep company, 62 percent of law school admissions officers opined that the U.S. News rankings “have lost some of their prestige over the last couple of years.”
When Yale withdrew from the rankings, there was some speculation in the YLS community that then-Dean Heather Gerken “feared that YLS was about to lose the #1 spot it has held for more than three decades—and she didn’t want that to happen on her watch, lest it tarnish her deanship (and her prospects of becoming a university president).”
In an interview with Law.com, Dave Killoran, founder and former CEO of PowerScore Test Prep, argued that the latest ranking shouldn’t cause people to “suddenly think Yale is now ‘worse’ than Stanford,” since “the measurements they choose to weight are arbitrary, and the entire system changes if we choose different weights for the inputs.”
Similarly, Dean Robert “Bobby” Ahdieh of Texas A&M University School of Law said, “My confidence in the caliber of Yale Law's faculty and students is identical today to yesterday.” He called YLS’s drop to #2 “random noise and nothing more,” adding that rankings “are no more than a very rough measure of quality.”
This is why I’m not troubled by the proliferation of ties in the rankings (discussed by my former colleague Staci Zaretsky at Above the Law). Schools fall into rough bands, but within each band, schools are fairly similar—so to claim that one school is “better” than another, simply because of a slight difference in numerical rank, implies a false precision.
Folks in the legal profession will probably always consider the rankings, despite their shortcomings. As Dean Ahdieh told Law.com, “While I fully appreciate the criticisms of law school rankings, I think the human psychology that leads us to rank preschools, pizza, football teams, and even cookware means they’re unlikely to ever go away.”
One can see why Dean Ahdieh, who took the helm at Texas A&M Law in 2018, wouldn’t be entirely opposed to the U.S. News rankings: they have captured dramatic changes at Texas A&M, which went from being unranked in 2015 to #22 today. And the ability of the rankings to capture and convey such institutional transformations over time—especially regarding schools outside the top 25 or so, which sometimes fly under the radar—is a key argument cited by defenders of the rankings.
From the perspective of U.S. News, volatility in the rankings from year to year might be a feature, not a bug. As Professor Brian Frye of the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law told Law.com, “Law school prestige changes very slowly, and U.S. News need[s] volatility in order for its rankings to remain relevant.” (Frye and Professor Christopher “CJ” Ryan of IU Maurer developed an alternative ranking, based on students’ “revealed preferences,” which I wrote about in 2024.)
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Yale/Stanford feels like a strong argument for changing the ranking metrics. Obviously, Stanford's employment rate is (marginally) higher because of its proximity to tech. Will that continue? No one knows. Will the skills relevant today be relevant in ten years? Everyone knows -- and the answer is no. The best post-AI law school preparation is to be as sharp, nimble, and adaptable as possible. (I would also add, as a recent lawprof, that some top schools remain institutionally clueless about AI.) Of course Stanford and all other top schools inculcate the relevant skills and virtues; the point isn't that Yale should still be #1. The point is that bar exam pass rate is irrelevant for predicting elite legal career success, and employment in the 2026 market is close to it.
It seems to me that the rankings change and focus on employment and bar passage makes the rankings much less important at the top (come on, all things being equal most people aren't going to Stanford over Yale, or Penn over Harvard) but also maybe way more helpful outside of the ~top 20? Seems like those are precisely the things to focus on if you're picking schools at that level.