Harvard drops from the top three law school

For the first time since 1990, Harvard Law School ranked fourth in the annual law school ranking as released by the U.S. News & World Report in 2022.

Meanwhile, Yale Law School maintained its long-held first-place ranking, with Stanford coming in second and Chicago Law School moving up from fourth to third surpassing Harvard.

The schools ranked in the top 20 in the U.S. News & World Report's list of the best law schools in 2023:

1) Yale University

2) Stanford University

3) The University of Chicago

4) Columbia University (tie)

4) Harvard University (tie)

6) The University of Pennsylvania

7) New York University

8) The University of Virginia

9) The University of California at Berkeley

10) The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

11) Duke University

12) Cornell University

13) Northwestern University

14) Georgetown University

15) The University of California at Los Angeles

16) Washington University in St. Louis

17) Boston University (tie)

18) The University of Texas at Austin (tie)

19) Vanderbilt University (tie)

20) The University of Southern California

"Is Harvard a worse school today than it was tomorrow? Of course not," law school consultant Mike Spivey said, adding, "but Harvard will be the buzz."

This ranking system is based on serious conclusions drawn from peer assessments by law faculties, rating by lawyers and judges, LSAT scores, undergraduate grade-point averages, student borrowing, employment and bar passage rates, and per-student expenditures.