Updating and projecting the 2024-2025 USNWR law school rankings (to be released March 2024 or so)

Last May, I projected USNWR law school rankings based on the publicly-available employment and bar passage data. New ABA data fills out most of the rest of the rankings data. I thought I’d update and see what changed. In short, not much. It’s not surprising, as I mentioned in May that this data is not only weighted less in the rankings but less subject to change. Most of the movement essentially occurred from changes in rounding errors that pushed schools up or down a tied spot.

Some ABA has data, which I tried to fix as best I can. I also have to approximate certain measures (e.g., which GRE percentiles USNWR uses), in addition to estimates of employment rankings, but these are about as robust as one can get. Of course, the peer and lawyer-judge scores will not be available until the spring, so I use last year’s scores. These are stickiest of all and least likely to change—but, given changes in survey response rates, it’s possible there’s slightly more volatility in these metrics.

As usual, I only list the top 100. Schools are sorted by rank, and then by estimated score within the rank (e.g., if six schools are tied at 50, the school at the top of the list has the highest score and is most likely to move up, and the school at the bottom of the list has the lowest score and is most likely to move down).

School	December 2023 projected rank	May 2023 projected rank	Current rank
Stanford	1	1	1
Yale	2	2	1
Chicago	3	3	3
Harvard	4	4	5
Virginia	4	4	8
Penn	6	6	4
Duke	6	6	5
Michigan	6	8	10
Columbia	9	8	8
Northwestern	9	10	10
Berkeley	11	10	10
NYU	11	10	5
UCLA	13	13	14
Washington Univ.	14	14	20
Georgetown	14	14	15
North Carolina	16	16	22
Texas	16	16	16
Cornell	18	18	13
Minnesota	19	19	16
Notre Dame	19	19	27
Vanderbilt	19	19	16
USC	22	22	16
Georgia	22	23	20
Boston Univ.	24	24	27
Wake Forest	24	24	22
Texas A&M	24	27	29
Florida	27	24	22
Utah	28	28	32
Boston College	28	31	29
William & Mary	28	28	45
Alabama	28	28	35
Washington & Lee	32	31	40
Ohio State	32	31	22
Iowa	34	34	35
George Mason	34	35	32
Indiana-Bloomington	36	35	45
Fordham	36	35	29
Florida State	36	35	56
Colorado	39	39	56
Arizona State	39	39	32
BYU	39	39	22
SMU	39	39	45
Baylor	39	39	49
George Washington	44	39	35
Irvine	44	45	35
Illinois	46	46	43
Connecticut	46	46	71
Davis	48	46	60
Wisconsin	48	50	40
Emory	48	46	35
Washington	48	50	49
Tennessee	48	52	51
Villanova	53	52	43
Penn State-Dickinson	53	52	89
Kansas	55	52	40
Temple	55	52	54
Pepperdine	55	57	45
Missouri	55	60	71
San Diego	55	57	78
UNLV	60	60	89
Penn State Law	60	57	80
Oklahoma	60	60	51
Wayne State	60	65	56
Cardozo	60	60	69
Kentucky	60	60	60
Loyola-Los Angeles	66	65	60
Arizona	66	68	54
Northeastern	68	65	71
Maryland	68	68	51
Richmond	68	68	60
Seton Hall	68	72	56
Cincinnati	68	72	84
South Carolina	73	77	60
Drexel	73	68	80
Nebraska	73	72	89
Georgia State	76	77	69
St. John's	76	72	60
Tulane	76	72	71
Florida International	76	77	60
Houston	76	77	60
Loyola-Chicago	76	77	84
UC Law-SF	82	82	60
Catholic	82	85	122
Drake	82	82	88
Maine	85	82	146
LSU	85	85	99
Pitt	85	85	89
Marquette	85	85	71
Belmont	89	90	105
Denver	89	90	80
New Hampshire	89	85	105
Lewis & Clark	89	90	84
New Mexico	89	93	96
Oregon	94	93	78
Texas Tech	94	97	71
UMKC	96	93	106
Case Western	96	97	80
Rutgers	96	nr	109
Dayton	96	97	111
Samford	100	nr	131
Regent	100	93	125
Duquesne	100	nr	89
Indiana-Indianapolis	100	nr	99
Miami	100	nr	71
Cleveland State	100	nr	111
West Virginia	100	nr	111

In the near future, I hope to model a few alternative rankings based on potential changes to the USNWR methodology that may be coming.