The U.S. News Rankings: Say Hello To The New T14

Pretty much the same as the old T14—with some good news for Stanford Law.

The University of Michigan Law Library (photo by David Lat).

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Next week, on April 18, U.S. News will publish its 2023-2024 law school rankings—the first set of rankings compiled using a brand-new methodology. After a slew of schools defected from the rankings, declaring that they would no longer provide U.S. News with certain proprietary data that the magazine needed to prepare its rankings under its then-existing methodology, U.S. News adopted a new methodology that no longer requires this data. Instead, the rankings now rely upon (1) information that the schools are required to disclose to the American Bar Association for accreditation, and (2) the reputation surveys compiled by U.S. News itself.

As a bit of a teaser, yesterday U.S. News offered us a preview of the new rankings—the top 14 aka “T14” schools. In case you’re wondering why T14 is a thing—as opposed to the top 10 schools, or the top 25—it’s because, as explained by Wikipedia, “[w]hile these schools have seen their position within the top fourteen spots shift frequently, they have generally not placed outside of the top fourteen since the inception of the rankings”—with only “rare exceptions” over the years.

Behold the T14 schools in the 2023-2024 Best Law Schools rankings of U.S. News, with their change from last year’s rankings noted parenthetically:

1. Stanford University (tie) (+1)
1. Yale University (tie) (0)
3. University of Chicago (0)
4. Harvard University (tie) (0)
4. University of Pennsylvania (Carey) (tie) (+2)
6. Duke University (tie) (+5)
6. New York University (tie) (+1)
8. Columbia University (tie) (-4)
8. University of Virginia (tie) (0)
10. Northwestern University (Pritzker) (tie) (+3)
10. University of California, Berkeley (tie) (-1)
10. University of Michigan—Ann Arbor (tie) (0)
13. Cornell University (-1)
14. University of California—Los Angeles (+1)

Some observations:

• When we discussed the U.S. News rankings drama on my podcast, former Northwestern Law dean Daniel Rodriguez and I predicted that the new rankings would look a lot like the old rankings, since dramatic change would call into question the legitimacy of past rankings. Our prediction has come to pass, at least as to the T14: these are the same 14 schools as the traditional T14, with one exception—UCLA edging out Georgetown for #14.

• Stanford Law has caught up with Yale Law—not just in disruptive protests, but in U.S. News. For what I believe to be the first time in the rankings, Yale is tied for #1 rather than alone at #1. Is this a sign that SLS is gaining on YLS, such that Stanford might be the undisputed #1 in some future year? Stay tuned.

• As was the case in last year’s rankings, the “Holy Trinity” of “HYS”—Harvard, Yale, Stanford—was disrupted. Once again, Chicago took the #3 spot, ahead of Harvard, and Harvard had to share the #4 spot—last year with Columbia, this year with Penn. (Sniffed a friend of mine who’s an HLS alum, “HLS tied with UPenn shows these rankings are meaningless.”)

• Some observers wondered whether law schools boycotting U.S. News might be punished in the rankings, while law schools staying in might be rewarded. The way U.S. News imposed this kind of penalty in the past was by using artificially low figures for the “placeholder” or estimated values for the data the boycotting schools refused to provide. But because of the methodology change, which now relies only on either public data or data developed by U.S. News, nobody got penalized or promoted. (The boycott leaders, Harvard and Yale, stayed the same, as did Chicago, which didn’t join the boycott; the other school that declined to join the boycott, Cornell, actually dropped a spot.)

• As you can see, there are a ton of ties in the rankings—and I think this actually makes the rankings look more legitimate. Instead of offering exaggerated precision, the new rankings reflect the reality that schools exist in bands or tiers.

• Overall, there wasn’t much movement within the T14—and I’m guessing this was by design, with U.S. News and rankings guru Bob Morse experimenting with different weightings of factors until they got a result that looked “right.” Of the 14 schools, only four moved by more than a single spot. The schools that moved up by more than one spot were Duke (+5), Northwestern (+3), and Penn (+2), and only one school moved down by more than one spot, Columbia (-4).

• For a long time, Columbia and NYU were seen as “T6” schools (along with HYS plus Chicago). But now NYU is back in the T6, after falling to #7 last year, while Columbia has been relegated to #8. Recruiting for CLS just got harder—and I suspect this U.S. News drop will have far more of an impact than the recruiting boycott of various affinity groups in the wake of the Columbia Law Instagram controversy. (By the way, the Instagram post in question is still up—and I’m guessing that it will be staying up, boycott or not.)

These are a few things that I noticed about the new T14. What jumped out at you? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

[UPDATE (4/22/2023, 1:03 a.m.): Actually, these might not wind up being the final T14. It appears that numerous schools have complained to U.S. News about apparent discrepancies in the data used for them. The issuance of the full rankings, originally posted to April 25 from April 18, has now been postponed indefinitely as a result of the “unprecedented number of inquiries” from law schools.]

[UPDATE (5/12/2023, 1:37 p.m.): Oh goodness, so much has happened since this “preview”—which turned out to contain errors. For the latest, including a corrected list of the T14 schools, please see my new post, The New U.S. News Rankings: Harvard Takes A Tumble.]

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