Best Law Schools Ranked in 2010
U.S. News surveyed 184 accredited programs to get the information used in the ranking of top law schools.
- 1. Yale University New Haven, CT
- 2. Harvard University Cambridge, MA
- 3. Stanford University Stanford, CA
- 4. Columbia University New York, NY
- 5. University of Chicago Chicago, IL
- 6. New York University New York, NY
- 7. University of California–Berkeley Berkeley, CA
- 8. University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA
- 9. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI
- 10. University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA
Best Law Schools Ranked in 2011
The rankings of 188 law schools fully accredited by the American Bar Association are based on a weighted average of the 12 measures of quality. Data were collected in the fall 2009 and early 2010. Specialty rankings are based solely on nominations by legal educators at peer institutions.
What’s New for the 2011 Best Graduate School Rankings
What’s new for the upcoming 2011 edition of America’s Best Graduate Schools? For the first time, U.S. News has separate peer assessment survey instruments that use a five-point scale for part-time law J.D. programs and part-time M.B.A. programs. As a result, U.S. News is contemplating significant methodology changes in both of these popular rankings. The 2011 edition of the rankings will be published in April 2010.
What will these changes mean for the upcoming part-time law J.D. program rankings?
This fall, we have asked law school deans, deans of academic affairs, chairs of faculty appointments, and the most recently tenured faculty members to rate 99 part-time J.D. programs on a scale from marginal (1) to outstanding (5). Those respondents who do not know enough about a law school’s part-time J.D. program to evaluate it fairly are asked to mark “don’t know.” A part-time law J.D. program’s peer assessment score will now be based on the average of all the respondents who rated it.
In addition to having a peer score on a 5.0 scale, U.S. News is contemplating including other factors in the upcoming part-time law J.D. program rankings. Additional ranking variables under consideration include:
- 2009 entering part-time J.D. students’ LSAT scores
- 2009 entering part-time J.D. students’ undergraduate grade point averages
- 2009 acceptance rate for those entering a part-time J.D. program
An indicator to measure to what degree a part-time program has both rich academic offerings and other law school activities for its students.
Implementing a more sophisticated methodology will enable U.S. News to rank all law schools with part-time J.D. programs.
Source: U.S.News and World Report, L.P.