The USA’s Top Law School’s

Above The Law report …. The 2010 U.S. News law school rankings leaked over the weekend were not fake. Bob Morse — the rankings guru — essentially confirmed the results to the Wall Street Journal today, ahead of the magazine’s official release tomorrow.

Here’s the official list of the top 20 law schools:


1. Yale

2. Harvard

3. Stanford

4. Columbia

5. NYU

6. (Tie) Berkeley, University of Chicago

8. Penn

9. Michigan

10. (Tie) Duke, Northwestern, UVA

13. Cornell

14. Georgetown

15. (Tie) UCLA, Texas

17. Vanderbilt

18. USC

19. Wash U

20. (Tie) Boston University, Emory, Minnesota

Above The Law have provided a fairly detailed commentary to the list – here’s how the introduce it…

As many of you have already pointed out, one school in particular experienced a precipitous drop out of the top 20. George Washington’s surprising fall, after the jump.

George Washington University Law School fell eight spots to 28th in this year’s rankings. For the first time, U.S. News ranked part-time programs as part of the main data set for law schools. GW has the second best part-time program, but dropped anyway.

But GW didn’t suffer the biggest drop among the top 50 law schools. That distinction belongs to Colorado. On the flip side, the Maurer School of Law (IU-Bloomington) jumped 13 spots to number 23. Tax Prof Blog collects the biggest movers in this year’s rankings:

* Indiana-Bloomington #23 (+13)
* UC-Davis #35 (+9)
* North Carolina #30 (+8)
* Utah #45 (+6)
* Cardozo #49 (+6)
* BYU #41 (+5)
* Washington & Lee #30 (-5)
* Arizona #43 (-5)
* George Washington #28 (-8)
* Colorado #45 (-13)

Full Report at http://abovethelaw.com/2009/04/us_news_2010_law_school_rankin.php