Projected 2025 U.S. News Law School Rankings: The Biggest Winners And Losers

Derek Muller (Iowa; Google Scholar), Projecting the 2024-2025 USNWR Law School Rankings (To Be Released March 2024 Or So):

Fifty-eight percent of the new USNWR law school rankings turn on three highly-volatile categories: employment 10 months after graduation, first-time bar passage, and ultimate bar passage.

Because USNWR releases its rankings in the spring, at the same time the ABA releases new data on these categories, the USNWR law school rankings are always a year behind. This year’s data include the ultimate bar passage rate for the Class of 2019, the first-time bar passage rate for the Class of 2021, and the employment outcomes of the Class of 2021.

We can quickly update all that data with this year’s data—Class of 2020 ultimate bar passage rate, Class of 2022 first-time bar passage, and Class of 2022 employment outcomes (which we have to estimate and reverse engineer, so there’s some guesswork). Those three categories are 58% of next year’s rankings.

Derek projects the Top 100 schools in next year's 2025 rankings. Here are the largest projected increases among those schools:

Rank	School	Projected 2025 Rank	Actual 2024 Rank	Difference
1	Maine	83	146	+63
2	Missouri-Kansas City	93	135	+42
3	Penn State-Dickinson	51	89	+38
4	Catholic	86	122	+36
5	Regent	93	125	+32
6	UNLV	60	89	+29
7	Connecticut	46	71	+25
8	Penn State Law	56	80	+24
9	San Diego	56	78	+22
10	Florida State	36	56	+20
11	New Hampshire	86	105	+19
12	Colorado	40	56	+16
12	William & Mary	29	45	+16
12	Wisconsin	24	40	+16
15	Belmont	90	105	+15
15	Marquette	56	71	+15
15	Nebraska	74	89	+15

Here are the the largest projected decreases among those schools:

Rank	School	Projected 2025 Rank	Actual 2024 Rank	Difference
1	Miami	97	71	-26
1	Texas Tech	97	71	-26
3	SMU	68	45	-23
3	UC-San Francisco	83	60	-23
5	Florida Int'l	79	60	-19
5	Houston	79	60	-19
5	South Carolina	79	60	-19
8	BYU	40	22	-18
9	Case Western	97	80	-17
9	Maryland	68	51	-17
11	Oregon	93	78	-15

TaxProf Blog coverage of the 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings:

• 2024 U.S. News Law School Peer Reputation Rankings (And Overall Rankings)
• The Impact Of The 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings Boycott On Peer Reputation
• Methodology Changes In The 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings
• The Law Schools Most Impacted By The Methodology Changes In The 2024 U.S. News Rankings
• 62 Law Schools Boycotted The 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings
• Pepperdine’s Place In The 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings
• Donald Tobin (Maryland), A Preliminary Analysis Of The 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings
• Brian Soucek (UC-Davis), A Law-School Rankings Formula After Ron DeSantis’s Own Heart
• Roundup, Commentary On The 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings