2020 U.S. News Clinical Training Rankings

Update: 2021 U.S. News Clinical Training Rankings

The new 2020 U.S. News Clinical Training Rankings include the clinical training programs at 180 law schools (the faculty survey had a 65% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.6	Georgetown
2	4.4	American
3	4.3	CUNY
3	4.3	Yale
5	4.2	NYU
6	4.1	Michigan
7	4.0	Denver
7	4.0	Maryland
7	4.0	Stanford
7	4.0	UC-Berkeley
7	4.0	UC-Irvine
7	4.0	Washington Univ.
13	3.9	District of Columbia
13	3.9	Northwestern
15	3.8	Baltimore
15	3.8	New Mexico
15	3.8	Seattle
15	3.8	UC-Hastings
19	3.7	Fordham
19	3.7	Harvard
19	3.7	Suffolk
19	3.7	Tennessee
23	3.6	Columbia
23	3.6	Loyola-New Orleans
23	3.6	Pennsylvania
26	3.5	George Washington
26	3.5	Georgia State
26	3.5	Northeastern
26	3.5	Rutgers
26	3.5	Texas
26	3.5	UCLA
26	3.5	Univ. of Washington
33	3.4	Chicago
33	3.4	Georgia
33	3.4	Miami
33	3.4	Pepperdine
33	3.4	UC-Davis
33	3.4	Washington & Lee
33	3.4	Wisconsin
40	3.3	Boston College
40	3.3	Brooklyn
40	3.3	Drexel
40	3.3	Mitchell Hamline
40	3.3	South Carolina
40	3.3	Texas A&M
40	3.3	Tulane
40	3.3	UNLV
48	3.2	Alabama
48	3.2	Albany
48	3.2	Boston University
48	3.2	Duke
48	3.2	Indiana (Maurer)
48	3.2	Loyola-Chicago
48	3.2	Minnesota
48	3.2	North Carolina
48	3.2	Notre Dame
48	3.2	St. Thomas (MN)
48	3.2	Temple
48	3.2	Virginia
48	3.2	William & Mary

As I blogged last fall, U.S. News has dramatically changed their ranking of nine law school specialty programs:

Law school specialty rankings ... are based solely on peer assessments by law school faculty who teach in that specialty area. The peer assessment surveys for the specialty law school area rankings were conducted in fall 2018 and early 2019 by U.S. News.

This year for the first time, law school faculty members who teach in each specialty area rated the other law schools in that specialty area on a 5-point scale. Those schools with the highest average scores among those raters who rated them appear in the rankings and are ranked in descending order based on their average peer score they received in that specialty area. In all the previous law school specialty rankings, the law school raters chose their top 15 in a specialty area. This new methodology produced a significantly larger number of schools that were ranked in each specialty area – in some cases five or six times more. ... [A]ll programs that received 10 or more ratings are numerically ranked in that specialty. Schools with less than 10 ratings in a specialty aren't listed.

Other 2020 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:

• Dispute Resolution
• Environmental Law
• Intellectual Property Law
• International Law
• Health Care Law
• Tax Law