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).