🔢 U.S. News releases law school rankings with a dash of controversy

Even for established lawyers, the U.S News and World Report law school rankings are always fun to discuss. But there’s an extra talking point this year, which is: Are these rankings legit? 

The rankings were released Monday: They came out after some last-minute revisions that miffed law school administrators. On March 16, U.S. News released an embargoed version of the rankings to schools before sending out a different version later in the day in which the positions of 35 schools had changed. 

• Meanwhile there was supposed to be a diversity component: But U.S. News acknowledged it failed to count Asian students and multiethnic students (ugh). So it just scrapped the diversity rankings. As Law.com put it, the various back-and-forth led some critics to describe the rankings as “meaningless” and “arbitrary.” 

The Verdict

Anyway, onto the rankings. UCLA leaped into the famed T-14, with Georgetown falling out. But some things never change: Yale, Stanford and Harvard were still the top three schools. (Full list here).