The LEAKED 2019 U.S. News Law School Rankings Are Here

If these are accurate, there are some key changes at the top of the rankings -- including a new T14.

We hope that you’re ready, because it’s almost the most wonderful time of the year for law schools. That’s right, the 2019 U.S. News law school rankings will be published on March 20, 2018. What’s that? You don’t want to wait until next week? Neither do we, so we’ve got a leak of the Top 50 law schools for you to feast your eyes upon.

Law school deans are saying their last prayers to rankings god guru Bob Morse in the hope that they won’t be ousted from their positions thanks to a few lost spots on the list, while prospective law students are getting ready to send out seat deposits to the law school with the best rank. As for current law students, they’re just waiting to see if the school they’ll graduate from will be considered more or less prestigious than when they first decided to debt-finance their futures based on their alma mater’s rank.

Today’s U.S. News rankings leak comes to us courtesy of Mike Spivey of the Spivey Consulting Group, who broke the news. For the past several years, Spivey has obtained the law school rankings ahead of their official publication, and they are always accurate. You can review them here, or at his blog here.

Take a look at the new T14 law schools. One school is curiously absent from the list:

1. Yale University
2. Stanford University
3. Harvard University
4. University of Chicago
5. Columbia University
6. New York University
7. University of Pennsylvania
8. University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
9. University of California—Berkeley (+3)
9. University of Virginia (-1)
11. Duke University (-1)
11. Northwestern University (-1)
13. Cornell University
14. Georgetown University (+1)

UPDATE (9:05 p.m.): The Top 100 law schools have been leaked. Click here to check them out.

UPDATE (03/14 9:30 p.m.): The full rankings have now been leaked. Check them out here.

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Berkeley is back in the top 10, Duke and Northwestern are both out of the top 10, and Georgetown has reclaimed its place as the T14’s anchor. Poor UT Austin had but a brief year in the sun as a member of the vaunted T14, and now the school is back down to No. 15. It was nice while it lasted. Don’t worry, there’s always next year.

With that out of the way, let’s take a gander at the law schools outside of the T14. Like years past, we’re faced with yet another rankings orgy, with nothing but ties, ties, and more ties. There are three ties in this segment of the rankings alone (two two-way ties and one five-way ties), with more to follow. Here are the schools ranked 15 – 30:

15. University of Texas—Austin (-1)
16. University of California—Los Angeles (-1)
17. Vanderbilt University
18. Washington University in St. Louis
19. University of Southern California
20. University of Minnesota (+3)
21. University of California—Irvine (+7)
22. Boston University (+1)
22. Emory University
24. George Washington University (+6)
24. University of Notre Dame (-4)
26. Washington and Lee University (+2)
27. Arizona State University (-2)
27. Boston College (-1)
27. University of Alabama (-1)
27. University of Iowa (-7)
27. University of Wisconsin—Madison (+3)

The big winners here are UC Irvine and GW, up seven and six spots in the rankings, respectively. Several years ago, Erwin Chemerinsky, Irvine’s founding dean, said his goal was for the school to debut in the top 20 of the U.S. News law school rankings. In 2015, in its first year of eligibility, the school debuted at No. 30, the highest debut of any new law school in the history of the rankings. Now, just three years later, the school is ranked at No. 21. Congratulations to UC Irvine! As for GW, it looks like shrinking the size of your entering class to stop the school’s rankings free fall worked out quite well. Nice work. The biggest loser in this segment of the rankings is Iowa, with a seven-spot drop that booted the school out of the Top 20. Ouch.

The rest of the leaked rankings are available on the next page.

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2019 USNWR Rankings (2018 Release) Are Here! [Spivey Consulting]


Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.