We spend an awful lot of time parsing out the proper metric for evaluating law schools (I’ll be fair, it’s probably too much time). Tracking small movements up and down the rankings is a cottage industry, one in which we here at Above the Law often gleeful partake. But there is something important about consistency — the excellence in legal education required to always be among the best.
That’s why University of Tennessee College of Law Professor Bradley Areheart’s new paper is so interesting (via TaxProf Blog). He’s assessed the rankings of the schools based on their average rankings by U.S. News & World Report over the last 5, 10 and 15 years. He’s taken all of that data and compiled the definitive list of law schools over time.
You can see the changes in the Top 100 rankings over the 5 and 15 year marks in Professor Areheart’s paper, but the middle 10 year mark seems to provide the best snapshot of the longterm quality (or at least rankings) of the law schools. So, who is at the top of the rankings over 10 years?
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Without further ado, here are the Top 20 Law Schools over the past 10 years:
10 Year Avg Rating/School
1.0 Yale
2.2 Harvard
2.5 Stanford
4.1 Columbia
4.8 Chicago
5.8 NYU
7.1 Pennsylvania
8.0 Berkeley
8.4 Virginia
9.0 Michigan
10.5 Duke
11.2 Northwestern
13.0 Cornell
13.9 Georgetown
15.0 Texas
15.8 UCLA
16.2 Vanderbilt
18.4 USC
18.9 Washington University in St. Louis
20.7 Minnesota
For those of us who obsessively follow the rankings from year to year, there isn’t much of a surprise in these rankings. However, seeing the consistent excellence over a decade is still impressive.
Congratulations to the schools on the list! You’ve proven you know what it takes to make a great law school year after year after year.
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Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).