Rankings

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March 6, 2019
2020 USNWR Rankings (2019 Release)

Please note, at the request of USNWR we have decided to take down this year's rankings. As a firm, we will always seek to give applicants critical information to help them with important and time-sensitive decisions. Going forward, we will be even more active on this blog in giving advice and value-added information. We will continue to break various rankings, admissions cycle numbers, future admissions cycle predictions, and employment numbers via our Twitter account [https://twitter.com/Spi

March 15, 2019
When a school drops in rank significantly, does that affect how "desperate" schools get?

This is an applicant question, and a timely one due to the recent USNWR rankings release and upcoming seat deposit deadlines. The applicant asking the question, I believe, uses “desperate” to mean, will a school that just dropped in the rankings suffer applicant pool consequences and thus need to go deeper into their own pool to admit? I will get to that a bit later in this post (and there is available data that anyone could look up by looking at schools that have dropped in the rankings in past

May 6, 2019
Create Your Own Law School Rankings (coming soon)

Good or bad, it seems almost everyone has something to say about law school rankings. One of the primary flaws of rankings, however, is that they dictate what is important by assigning weight to different categories. When algorithms and methodologies behind rankings change, or when new rankings are created, it is often with the purpose of adjusting the importance of the metrics that go into them to make them better or more meaningful to the people who are looking at those rankings. But no matter

May 6, 2019
What the U.S. News Law School Rankings Looked Like in 1987

The U.S. News & World Report law school rankings have changed quite a bit over the years. In 1987, the methodology included just one metric—the percentage of law school deans who ranked the school, in their subjective estimation, as a "top 10 law school." See below the resulting top 20. As a bonus, you can also see what tuition rates looked like in 1987—the highest figure of which is under $14,000 (Columbia), and the lowest of which is just $4,500 (UT Austin—which is out-of-state) (note that all

August 13, 2019
About the USNWR Peer & Lawyer/Judge Scores

These scores should be thought of as not leading the rankings but being led by the rankings.

September 3, 2019
Mike Spivey's My Rank Top 50 Law Schools

As many of you know, we have spent the past several months developing a tool for prospective law school applicants to create their own customized law school rankings.

September 9, 2019
2020 US News Undergraduate Rankings

U.S. News & World Report has released their 2020 Undergraduate Rankings. Below we've charted the change in each of the 2020 top fifty universities ranking from last year!

October 12, 2019
The Over-Estimated Impact of Median LSAT Change on USNWR Rankings

It's that time of year again—when schools report their incoming class profiles.

December 13, 2019
Statement on USNWR Law School Rankings

For the past 7 years, we have been fortunate to have received a copy of the law school rankings before they have been released, and we have provided that copy to the public.