The 2024 U.S. News Rankings: Holding Steady

Harvard, UVA, and Georgetown were the most noteworthy gainers in the T14.

UVA Law School (photo by David Lat).

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here. Thanks!

Yesterday, U.S. News published its 2024 Best Law School rankings. For the 2023 rankings, the magazine radically overhauled its methodology, leading to a lot of movement. For the 2024 rankings, it largely adhered to last year’s approach, which explains why there was more stability this time around.

A school’s ranking is now based on the following components, weighted as follows (with a few minor adjustments from 2023, per Staci Zaretsky at Above the Law):

• Employment: 33% (newly averaged between the two most recent graduating class years)

• First-Time Bar Passage: 18% (newly averaged between the two most recent graduating class years)

• Ultimate Bar Passage: 7% (newly averaged between the two most recent graduating class years)

• Peer Assessment: 12.5% (slightly tweaked)

• Lawyer/Judge Assessment: 12.5% (slightly tweaked)

• LSAT/GRE: 5%

• UGPA: 4%

• Acceptance Rate: 1%

• Student-Faculty Ratio: 5%

• Library Resources: 2%

Averaging employment and bar-passage stats between the two most recent class years makes sense to me, as a way of reducing the influence of a single aberrant class. It will also tend to reduce variability over the years, which again probably offers a more accurate picture of how law schools fare in terms of finding jobs for their graduates and helping them pass the bar.

Now, on to the rankings. Here are the top 14 aka “T14” law schools—or actually the top 15, because of a two-way tie for #14—with changes from last year noted parenthetically:

(1) Stanford University (-)
(1) Yale University (-)
(3) University of Chicago (-)
(4) Duke University (+1)
(4) Harvard University (+1)
(4) University of Pennsylvania (Carey) (-)
(4) University of Virginia (+4)
(8) Columbia University (-)
(9) New York University (-4)
(9) Northwestern University (Pritzker) (+1)
(9) University of Michigan—Ann Arbor (+1)
(12) University of California, Berkeley (-2)
(13) University of California—Los Angeles (+1)
(14) Cornell University (-1)
(14) Georgetown University (+1)

Some observations:

• Once again, Stanford and Yale tied for #1. I predict, however, that at some point in the next few years, Stanford will be an undisputed #1—in the U.S. News rankings, not free-speech debacles.¹

• And once again, Chicago rounded out the top three schools. Sorry, Harvard—but hey, at least you’re no longer #5.

• Congratulations to UVA Law, which climbed four spots—the biggest increase in the T14 this year. I’m not surprised; I recently returned from speaking there, and I came away deeply impressed by the students, faculty, and overall environment. Folks there just seem… happy, which isn’t always the case at top law schools.

• Kudos also to Georgetown Law, which rose a spot to reclaim its place among the T14. UCLA, which edged out Georgetown last year for #14, also rose a spot, to #13. But Georgetown managed to return to the T14 by tying with Cornell, which dropped a spot.

• The Columbia v. NYU battle continues: last year NYU had the edge, but this year it fell by four spots to #9—landing it below Columbia, which held steady at #8.

Let’s now turn to the top 50 schools—or actually 51, again because of a tie (via Spivey Consulting):

(16) University of Minnesota (-)
(16) University of Texas—Austin (-)
(16) Washington University in St. Louis (+4)
(19) Vanderbilt University (-3)
(20) University of Georgia (-)
(20) University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (+2)
(20) University of Notre Dame (+7)
(20) University of Southern California (-4)
(24) Boston University (+3)
(25) Wake Forest University (-3)
(26) Ohio State University (Moritz) (-4)
(26) Texas A&M University (+3)
(28) Boston College (+1)
(28) Brigham Young University (Clark) (-6)
(28) George Mason University (Scalia) (+4)
(28) University of Florida (Levin) (-6)
(28) University of Utah (Quinney) (+4)
(33) Fordham University (-4)
(33) University of Alabama (+2)
(33) Washington and Lee University (+7)
(36) Arizona State University (O'Connor) (-4)
(36) University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (+7)
(36) University of Iowa (-1)
(36) University of Wisconsin-Madison (+4)
(36) William & Mary Law School (+9)
(41) George Washington University (-6)
(42) Emory University (-7)
(42) Indiana University—Bloomington (Maurer) (+3)
(42) Southern Methodist University (Dedman) (+3)
(42) University of California-Irvine (-7)
(46) Baylor University (+3)
(46) University of Kansas (-6)
(48) Florida State University (+8)
(48) University of Colorado-Boulder (+8)
(48) University of Washington (+1)
(48) Villanova University (Widger) (-5)

Some observations:

• As usual, the farther down you go in the rankings, the bigger the moves in rank. Congratulations to the schools that moved up by 5 or more spots: Notre Dame (+7), Washington and Lee (+7), Illinois (+7), William & Mary (+9), Florida State (+8), and UC Boulder (+8). And condolences to the schools that moved down by 5 or more spots: BYU (-6), University of Florida (-6), GW (-6), Emory (-7), UC Irvine (-7), Kansas (-6), and Villanova (-5).

• Although judicial clerkships as such aren’t part of the rankings—they help in terms of the employment score as full-time jobs requiring a law degree, but there’s no separate clerkships factor in the methodology—schools that punch above their weight in clerkship placement did well in this year’s rankings. See, e.g., UVA (+4), Notre Dame (+7), and George Mason/Scalia Law (+4). I suspect that these three schools, which are more conservative than their peer institutions, excel at producing clerks because the federal judiciary is to the right of the average student body or faculty of an elite law school.

• In last year’s rankings, based on a new methodology that placed much greater weight on employment outcomes and bar passage, state schools made major gains—which made sense, since state schools usually have strong in-state employer networks and excel at preparing students for their state’s bar exam. But in this year’s rankings, it’s harder to see a pattern; some state schools went up, and some state schools went down.

As for the rest of the rankings, here are the biggest gainers (up 10 or more spots):

(55) University of Connecticut (+16)
(61) University of Missouri (+10)
(68) Pennsylvania State University—University Park (+12)
(68) University of San Diego (+10)
(75) Pennsylvania State University Dickinson Law (+14)
(78) University of Nevada—Las Vegas (Boyd) (+11)
(91) Belmont University (+14)
(94) The Catholic University of America (+28)
(103) Samford University (Cumberland) (+28)
(108) Regent University (+17)
(108) University at Buffalo—SUNY (+17)
(117) University of Missouri—Kansas City (+18)
(120) University of Maine School of Law (+26)
(130) Hofstra University (Deane) (+10)
(136) University of Akron (+14)
(145) Willamette University College of Law (+10)
(150) South Texas College of Law Houston (+12)
(161) Ave Maria School of Law (+19)
(165) Lincoln Memorial University (Duncan) (+10)
(168) University of North Dakota (+12)
(172) St. Thomas University (+13)

And here are the biggest decliners (down 10 or more spots):

(82) Texas Tech University (-11)
(82) UC Law, San Francisco (fka Hastings) (-22)
(82) University of Miami (-11)
(98) Stetson University (-14)
(117) Albany Law School (-12)
(120) Gonzaga University (-21)
(130) Loyola University New Orleans (-19)
(136) University of Louisville (Brandeis) (-37)
(140) University of Memphis (Humphreys) (-15)
(148) Elon University (-15)
(148) University of Toledo (-15)
(159) University of the Pacific (McGeorge) (-18)
(176) Faulkner University (Jones) (-17)

Some observations:

• Since there was no major methodological change between the 2023 versus 2024 rankings, there was less movement in the rankings compared to the 2023 versus 2022 rankings:

  • In the 2023 rankings, 10 schools moved up by 24 or more spots. But in the 2024 rankings, only three schools—Catholic (+28), Samford (+28), and Maine (+26)—moved by that much.

  • And in the 2023 rankings, 10 schools moved down by 25 or more spots. In the 2024 rankings, only one school—Louisville (-37)—moved by that much.

• UC Law, San Francisco, formerly known as UC Hastings Law, dropped 22 spots in this year’s ranking to #82, after falling nine places in last year’s ranking. So since its board of directors voted to change its name in 2021 (because of Serranus Clinton Hastings’s involvement in the killing and dispossession of Native Americans), the school has dropped by 31 spots. Are respondents to U.S. News reputational surveys confusing UC Law, San Francisco, with the lower-ranked University of San Francisco School of Law (#165)?

For the complete rankings of all 196 law schools, check out U.S. News, Above the Law, or Spivey Consulting. What do you notice in the new rankings? Please feel free to share any thoughts in the comments.

---

Thanks for reading Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to my paid subscribers for making this publication possible. Subscribers get (1) access to Judicial Notice, my time-saving weekly roundup of the most notable news in the legal world; (2) additional stories reserved for paid subscribers; (3) transcripts for podcast episodes; and (4) the ability to comment on posts. You can email me at davidlat@substack.com with questions or comments, and you can share this post or subscribe using the buttons below.

1. Speaking of free-speech debacles at leading law schools, I was very sorry to hear about what Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife, Professor Catherine Fisk, just had to endure from protesters in their own home. Dean Chemerinsky is a champion of free speech—which is why he didn’t discipline any students for offensive posters, which he viewed as protected by the First Amendment—but as he correctly notes, a dinner at his home is not a public forum.