U.S. News has released its ranking of best law schools for 2023. U.S. News looked at 14 indicators (down from 20 last year) and 13 law school specialty rankings, to determine overall ranking as well as each school’s usnews.com profile. The rankings were determined by surveys sent to 192 law schools that were fully accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA). One major change this year concerned a more comprehensive assessment of the bar passage rates of first-time test takers. Another difference in the 2023 ranking is the reduction of the library resources metric to a single factor relating to student support by professional librarians. There are several schools listed without a ranking, because they were provisionally accredited or not accredited at the time of the survey.
Highlights of the 2023 law school rankings
Yale and Stanford have retained their number 1 and 2 rankings. Harvard dropped from #3 to #4, while University of Chicago went from a tie for #4 with Columbia to #3. Duke and University of Michigan, who shared the #10 spot last year lost their Top 10 rankings, while University of Michigan, Ann Arbor climbed into the #10 spot.
U.S. News 2023 Top 10 Law Schools
| 2023 Rank | 2022 Rank | 2021 Rank | School | ’23 vs ’22 Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 1 | Yale University | – |
| 2 | 2 | 2 | Stanford University | – |
| 3 | 4 | 4 | University of Chicago | +1 |
| 4 | 3 | 3 | Harvard University | -1 |
| 4 | 4 | 4 | Columbia University | – |
| 6 | 6 | 7 | University of Pennsylvania (Carey) | – |
| 7 | 6 | 6 | New York University | -1 |
| 8 | 8 | 8 | University of Virginia | – |
| 9 | 9 | 9 | University of California, Berkeley | – |
| 10 | 10 | 9 | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor | – |
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