Law School Rankings Methodology

The American Bar Association's 2008 Annual Questionnaire required law schools to report their bar passage rate results for first-time test-takers for the same calendar-year winter and summer. Prior to that, the American Bar Association's Annual Questionnaire had required the reporting period for first-time test takers to be split between two calendar years (summer in one year and winter in the second year). When the American Bar Association's 2008 Annual Questionnaire changed how law schools reported their first-time test takers bar passage results to the same calendar year, U.S. News changed our calculations.

Faculty Resources (weighted by .15)

Expenditures Per Student The average expenditures per student for the 2007 and 2008 fiscal years. The average instruction, library, and supporting services (.0975) are measured, as are all other items, including financial aid (.015).

Student/Faculty Ratio (.03) The ratio of students to faculty members for 2008, using the American Bar Association definition.

Library Resources (.0075) The total number of volumes and titles in the school's law library at the end of the 2008 fiscal year.

Overall Rank

Data were standardized about their means, and standardized scores were weighted, totaled, and rescaled so that the top school received 100; others received their percentage of the top score.

Schools Not Ranked

Western State University and University of La Verne in California, Florida A&M University, John Marshall Law School-Atlanta, Charleston School of Law in South Carolina, Faulkner University in Alabama, Liberty University in Virginia, Phoenix School of Law in Arizona, Charlotte School of Law and Elon University in North Carolina, and Drexel University in Pennsylvania are not ranked because, as of June 2008, they were only provisionally approved by the American Bar Association. Three law schools in Puerto Rico—Catholic University, Inter-America University, and the University of Puerto Rico—are not ranked.

To be ranked and listed on the overall ranking tables, a law school must be accredited and fully approved by the American Bar Association and must draw most of its students from the United States.

The Tiers

The law schools not ranked in the top 100 are listed alphabetically in two groups, the third tier and fourth tier. Law schools within each of these tiers should be considered broadly similar in quality. The third tier contains schools (listed alphabetically) with rankings that begin at 103, and the tourth tier contains schools (listed alphabetically) with rankings that begin at 140. Thus, the third tier contains higher-ranked law schools than the tourth tier.

Specialty Rankings

These specialty rankings are based solely on votes by legal educators, who nominated up to 15 schools in each field. Legal educators chosen were a selection of those listed in the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Law Teachers 2007-2008 as currently teaching in that field. In the case of clinical and legal writing, the nominations were made by directors or members of the clinical and legal writing programs at each law school. Those programs that received the most top 15 nominations appear in descending order.

Changes in Ranking Methodology

For the "America's Best Graduate Schools" 2010 edition, U.S. News modified the main law school rankings methodology. We used the combined fall 2008 class admissions data for both full-time and part-time entering students for the median LSAT scores, median undergraduate grade-point averages, and the acceptance rate in calculating the school's overall ranking. U.S. News's previous law school ranking methodology used only the full-time entering student data for those three admissions variables. This change improves the methodology, because U.S. News is now comparing each law school's entering class against every other's based on the entire student body, which produces the most complete comparisons. Starting in 1990, annual data for part-time J.D. students have been included in computing all the other statistical variables used in the faculty resources and placement success factors that involved students in the U.S. News law school ranking methodology.