Stanford Law School
Major Changes Across New US News Law School Ranking
ABA Journal: “Stanford Law School and Yale Law School tied for first place in rankings released Tuesday by U.S. News & World Report, the same spot that they occupied in last year’s list.
Harvard Law School and the Duke University School of Law fell out of the top five; they are now tied at No. 6.
The biggest gain among the top 14 was Vanderbilt University, which moved up five spots to reach No. 14 in a tie with three others law schools. Cornell University had the biggest downward movement compared to last year’s top 14, falling four spots to No. 18 in a tie with one other school.”
To read more, click here.
Kaplan Survey: Law School Ranking Losing Prestige Among Admissions Officers
Business Wire: “Leading global education company Kaplan finds that 62 percent of law school admissions officers believe that the U.S. News & World Report rankings — the 2025 list was just released today — “have lost some of their prestige over the last couple of years.”* This marks a significant increase from the 51 percent who held this view in a 2023 Kaplan survey. Admissions officers shared the following opinions:
- “We play the game, but the reality of it is they are biased and don’t take into consideration the ‘fit’ of a law school for students.”
- “It certainly should not be the only thing candidates look at and hopefully it will lose some of its magnetic pull.”
- “Law school rankings as a whole are pernicious, but I do value the information they provide. I just wish applicants understood exactly what the rankings assess.”
To read more, click here.
How Law Schools Rank On Academic Peer Reputation
“Continuing a TaxProf Blog tradition (see links below for 2008-09 to 2024-25), here is the full list of the 195 law schools ranked by academic peer reputation, as well as their overall rank, in the new 2025-26 U.S. News Law School Rankings (methodology):
| Peer Rank | Peer Score | School | Overall Rank |
| 1 | 4.7 | Harvard | 6 |
| 1 | 4.7 | Stanford | 1 |
| 3 | 4.6 | Chicago | 3 |
| 4 | 4.5 | Columbia | 10 |
| 4 | 4.5 | Yale | 1 |
To see how other schools fared, click here.
Editor’s Note: Here is how US News & World Report defines Peer Assessment Score, which carries a 12.5% weight in the ranking.
“Law school deans, deans of academic affairs, chairs of faculty appointments and the most recently tenured faculty members rated programs’ overall quality on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding). Those unfamiliar with a particular school’s programs were asked to select “don’t know.” Responses of “don’t know” counted neither for nor against a school. Scores for each school were determined by computing a trimmed mean – eliminating the two highest and two lowest 1 to 5 ratings from all respondents. A school’s score is the average of 1 to 5 ratings received. U.S. News administered the peer assessment survey in fall 2024 and early 2025; 55.8% of recipients at law schools who submitted the statistical survey responded.
Peer assessment ratings were used only when submitted by law schools that also submitted their statistical surveys. This means schools that declined to provide statistical information to U.S. News had their academic peer ratings programmatically discarded before any computations were made. Non-responders were still scored using the full complement of eligible ratings submitted by peer schools, but any ratings they made of other schools were omitted.”
