Prospective students, alumni, and current members of law schools are eagerly anticipating the release of the 2025 U.S. News Law School Rankings. Last year, these rankings were notably delayed due to controversy, including 63 schools, which followed Yale’s example in boycotting and withdrawing from rankings consideration. The fraught situation was compounded by a mistake-ridden preview of the T14 being published and subsequently removed due to numerous methodology changes.
The question now on everyone’s minds is whether U.S. News will alter its methodology once again after last year’s difficulties. Currently, the organization’s method involves a 10% weight on law school admissions in the overall ranking. This category includes acceptance rate, median undergraduate GPA, and median LSAT, each with different weighting [1] [2] [3]. GRE scores have been omitted due to insufficient data.
However, we may already have a preview of the 2025 rankings, thanks to Dean Paul Caron of Pepperdine University School of Law. Caron has compiled charts using available ABA data and created two rankings, one of which approximates the U.S. News rankings using Z scores. With this methodology, the top 14 schools may already be projected.
With this in mind, Harvard, Washington University, Georgetown, Texas, and Texas A&M might be hopeful that the official U.S. News rankings will reflect their impressive admissions profiles. Conversely, schools like UC Berkeley, Michigan, Duke, and UCLA are likely relieved that the rankings consider more than just admissions performance.
Law professionals will be eagerly awaiting the official release of the rankings this spring. However, in the interim, the Above the Law Top 50 Law School Rankings offer an interesting outcome-based methodology which may give a different projection [4].