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The 2012 U.S. News Rankings: Horns Hook into the Top 14

By Ashby Jones

Well, the more things change, the more the U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of the law schools stays the same.

The listing for 2012 was unveiled Tuesday and, well, aside from some minor adjustments, it doesn’t look dramatically different from last year’s. Or the year before’s.

The top 35: 1) Yale, 2) Harvard, 3) Stanford, 4) Columbia, 5) Chicago, 6) NYU, 7) Michigan, 7) Penn (tie), 9) Berkeley, 9) UVA (tie), 11) Duke, 12) Northwestern, 13) Cornell, 14) Georgetown, 14) Texas (tie), 16) UCLA, 16) Vanderbilt (tie), 18) USC, 18) Wash U. (tie), 20) GW, 20) Minnesota (tie), 22) BU, 23) Indiana, 23) UC Davis (tie), 23) Illinois (tie), 23) Notre Dame (tie), 27) BC, 27) William & Mary (tie), 27) Iowa (tie), 30) Emory, 30) Fordham (tie), 30) UNC (tie), 30) Washington (tie), 30) Washington & Lee (tie), 35) Ohio State, 35) Alabama (tie), 35) Georgia (tie), 35) Wisconsin (tie).

Click here for the rankings; here for U.S. News’s writeup on them.

As the publication points out, the big deal within the top 35 is the appearance of a newcomer to the Top 14. (Hello, Texas. How does it feel?) It’s the first time since the start of the rankings that a school other than the first 14 listed here has cracked that illustrious group.

Other schools that made jumps: Maryland (from 48th to 42nd) and UC Davis (28th to 23rd). Among the biggest fallers among the top 50: Emory, Colorado, Georgia and Wisconsin.

The structure of the rankings is different this year. Instead of four tiers — two of which were organized by numerical ranking, two of which weren’t — this year’s list contains two tiers. The top group ranks the law schools from 1 to 145; the lower group simply contains the remaining 45 schools, listed alphabetically.

Click here for the National Law Journal story; here for ATL’s post.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 15, 2011 (boomark / email).