Friday, March 22, 2019
2020 U.S. News Legal Writing Rankings
Update: 2021 U.S. News Legal Writing Rankings
The new 2020 U.S. News Legal Writing Rankings include the legal writing programs at 163 law schools (the faculty survey had a 43% response rate). Here are the Top 50:
Rank | Score | School |
1 | 4.5 | UNLV |
2 | 4.1 | Seattle |
3 | 4.0 | Stetson |
3 | 4.0 | Suffolk |
5 | 3.9 | Arizona State |
5 | 3.9 | Oregon |
5 | 3.9 | Wake Forest |
8 | 3.8 | Denver |
8 | 3.8 | John Marshall (IL) |
8 | 3.8 | North Carolina |
11 | 3.7 | Temple |
12 | 3.6 | Arkansas (Little Rock) |
12 | 3.6 | Georgetown |
14 | 3.5 | Drexel |
14 | 3.5 | Duquesne |
14 | 3.5 | Marquette |
14 | 3.5 | Mercer |
14 | 3.5 | Michigan |
14 | 3.5 | UC-Irvine |
20 | 3.4 | Drake |
20 | 3.4 | Indiana (McKinney) |
20 | 3.4 | Missouri (Kansas City) |
20 | 3.4 | Northwestern |
20 | 3.4 | Nova |
20 | 3.4 | Pacific |
20 | 3.4 | Rutgers |
20 | 3.4 | Texas Tech |
20 | 3.4 | Washburn |
29 | 3.3 | Arizona |
29 | 3.3 | Baltimore |
29 | 3.3 | Boston College |
29 | 3.3 | Brooklyn |
29 | 3.3 | Lewis & Clark |
29 | 3.3 | Memphis |
29 | 3.3 | Texas |
29 | 3.3 | Villanova |
37 | 3.2 | Chicago-Kent |
37 | 3.2 | Iowa |
37 | 3.2 | Ohio State |
37 | 3.2 | Tennessee |
37 | 3.2 | Texas A&M |
42 | 3.1 | Arkansas (Fayetteville) |
42 | 3.1 | DePaul |
42 | 3.1 | Duke |
42 | 3.1 | Loyola-Chicago |
42 | 3.1 | Loyola-New Orleans |
42 | 3.1 | Northeastern |
42 | 3.1 | South Carolina |
42 | 3.1 | Syracuse |
42 | 3.1 | Univ. of Washington |
42 | 3.1 | Wyoming |
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:
- Clinical Training
- Dispute Resolution
- Environmental Law
- Health Care Law
- Intellectual Property Law
- International Law
- Tax Law
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/03/2020-us-news-legal-writing-rankings.html