2020 U.S. News Dispute Resolution Rankings

Update: 2021 U.S. News Dispute Resolution Rankings

The new 2020 U.S. News Dispute Resolution Rankings include the dispute resolution programs at 92 law schools (the faculty survey had a 54% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.5	Ohio State
2	4.4	Pepperdine
3	4.3	Harvard
3	4.3	Missouri (Columbia)
5	4.1	Mitchell Hamline
5	4.1	UNLV
7	4.0	Oregon
8	3.9	Cardozo
8	3.9	Marquette
10	3.8	Arizona State
10	3.8	Northwestern
10	3.8	UC-Hastings
13	3.7	Maryland
13	3.7	Texas A&M
15	3.5	Quinnipiac
16	3.4	Suffolk
17	3.3	Columbia
17	3.3	Georgetown
17	3.3	Stanford
17	3.3	UC-Davis
21	3.2	Creighton
21	3.2	Fordham
21	3.2	Texas Tech
24	3.1	Florida
24	3.1	Lewis & Clark
24	3.1	Michigan
24	3.1	Nebraska
24	3.1	Texas
24	3.1	USC
24	3.1	Washington Univ.
31	3.0	South Texas
31	3.0	Stetson
31	3.0	UC-Berkeley
31	3.0	Willamette
35	2.9	Baltimore
35	2.9	Chicago-Kent
35	2.9	Kansas
35	2.9	Pace
35	2.9	Penn State (Dickinson)
35	2.9	Pennsylvania
35	2.9	St. John's
35	2.9	UCLA
35	2.9	Univ. of Washington
44	2.8	Arkansas (Little Rock)
44	2.8	Georgia State
44	2.8	Houston
44	2.8	Michigan State
44	2.8	Northeastern
44	2.8	NYU
44	2.8	William & Mary

As I blogged last fall, U.S. News has dramatically changed their ranking of the 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:

• Clinical Training
• Environmental Law
• Health Care Law
• Intellectual Property Law
• International Law
• Tax Law