2020 U.S. News Tax Rankings

Update: 2021 U.S. News Tax Rankings

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. [The response rate of the tax faculty survey was 50%.].

The new 2020 U.S. News Tax Rankings include the tax programs at 175 law schools. Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.9	NYU
2	4.5	Georgetown
3	4.4	Florida
4	4.2	Northwestern
5	4.1	Virginia
6	4.0	Columbia
6	4.0	Stanford
8	3.9	Harvard
8	3.9	UC-Irvine
8	3.9	UCLA
11	3.8	Chicago
11	3.8	Michigan
11	3.8	Pennsylvania
14	3.7	Boston College
14	3.7	Boston University
14	3.7	Duke
14	3.7	Loyola-L.A.
14	3.7	USC
14	3.7	Texas
20	3.6	Indiana (Maurer)
20	3.6	Yale
22	3.5	San Diego
23	3.4	UC-Berkeley
24	3.2	Miami
25	3.1	Temple
25	3.1	UC-Hastings
25	3.1	Minnesota
25	3.1	North Carolina
25	3.1	Pittsburgh
25	3.1	Univ. of Washington
25	3.1	Villanova
32	3.0	Florida State
32	3.0	Fordham
32	3.0	George Washington
32	3.0	Pepperdine
32	3.0	UC-Davis
37	2.9	BYU
37	2.9	Alabama
37	2.9	Georgia
37	2.9	Houston
37	2.9	Washington & Lee
37	2.9	Washington Univ.
43	2.8	Arizona State
43	2.8	Georgia State
43	2.8	Notre Dame
46	2.7	Brooklyn
46	2.7	Emory
46	2.7	Ohio State
46	2.7	Tulane
46	2.7	Illinois
46	2.7	Iowa
46	2.7	William & Mary

Among the law schools in the tax rankings last year, ranked last year Here are the biggest upward moves:

• +13:  Stanford (#6)
• +8:  Chicago (#11), Penn (#11)
• +6:  Columbia (#6)
• +5:  Duke (#14)

Here are the biggest downward moves:

• -30:  Denver (55)
• -8:  Univ. of Washington (#25)
• -7:  Boston University (#14)
• -6:  Loyola-L.A. (#14), San Diego (#22)
• -5:  Yale (#20)

Here are the rankings of law schools with graduate tax programs:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.9	NYU
2	4.5	Georgetown
3	4.4	Florida
4	4.2	Northwestern
5	3.9	UC-Irvine
6	3.8	Michigan
7	3.7	Boston University
7	3.7	Loyola-L.A.
9	3.5	San Diego
10	3.2	Miami
11	3.1	Temple
11	3.1	Univ. of Washington
11	3.1	Villanova
14	2.9	Alabama
14	2.9	Houston
14	2.9	Washington Univ.
17	2.6	SMU
18	2.5	Denver
19	2.4	Chicago-Kent
20	2.3	Chapman
20	2.3	Loyola-Chicago
22	2.2	DePaul
23	2.1	Wayne State
24	1.9	Baltimore
24	1.9	Golden Gate
24	1.9	John Marshall (IL)
27	1.7	Missouri (Kansas City)
27	1.7	New York Law School
29	1.2	Capital
30	1.0	W. Michigan

Other resources available on TaxProf Blog include:

• Links to All 33 Graduate Tax Programs
• Tax Faculty Rankings
• Graduate Tax Faculty Rankings
• Tax Professor Rankings
• Tax Faculty Metropolitan Area Rankings
• Links to Tax Colloquia Workshop Series

Other 2020 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:

• Clinical Training
• Environmental Law
• Intellectual Property Law
• International Law
• Health Care Law
• Dispute Resolution