Tobin: XPT Top 25 Law School Rankings (Alpha Phase)

For the third year in a row (The Silly U.S. News Law School Rankings (2024-25), A Preliminary Analysis Of The New U.S. News Law School Rankings (2023-24)), Donald Tobin shares his thoughts on the forthcoming U.S. News Law School Rankings:  XPT Top 25 Law School Rankings (Alpha Phase), by Donald Tobin (Maryland; Google Scholar):

This year I took a different approach to the law school rankings. I asked experts in legal education to rank the top 25 law schools. I am referring to these as the XPT Rankings. As a warning, this ranking is in the Alpha Phase (which today I learned is when something is in the initial test stage. This is even before beta). Our experts all have significant years in legal education, either as an educator, leader, vendor, consultant or commentator. This year’s group of experts was small, and I stayed away from faculty members. I recognize that based on how I selected this year’s group, we missed lots of great faculty, administrators and other experts who have broad knowledge about legal education. We hope to include a wider group of experts next year. I am not asserting that this meets a rigorous statistical test nor that these rankings are objective. Also, for this year, I am not listing the experts to provide anonymity as the Alpha version is tested. In future years, I hope to provide more details about the methodology. (So please don’t tell me this is not a rigorous study. For the record, this is not a rigorous study). For this year, think of this group like a small NCAA Selection Committee, but a committee who picked teams you liked. 

Here are the XPT Top 25 Rankings for the 2025:

Rank	School	Normalized Score
1	Stanford	100
2	Yale	99
3	Harvard	98
3	Chicago	98
5	NYU	97
6	Virginia	96
7	Columbia	95
7	Michigan	95
7	Penn	95
10	Berkeley	94
10	Duke	94
12	Georgetown	92
12	Cornell	92
12	Northwestern	92
15	UCLA	90
15	Vanderbilt	90
15	Texas	90
18	Minnesota	89
19	Wash U	86
20	UNC	84
20	BU	84
22	Notre Dame	83
22	USC	83
24	George Washington	80
24	BC	80

There was one bubble school, Emory, so you can probably guess where it would have been ranked. Many schools were just below Emory, including, in alphabetical order, Florida, Fordham, Georgia, Iowa, OSU, SMU, Texas A&M, William and Mary, Wake Forest and Wisconsin.

I also asked experts to identify one school that was special for some particular reason. Here are some remarks: Howard – “great job placement,” Fordham – “excellent scholars,” Loyola LA –  “strong school with good local market strength,” [Ed. Note: of course, fantastic tax faculty], CUNY – “strong public interest placement,” St. Thomas (Minnesota) – “leadership in Professional Identify Formation,” Jacksonville – “will be interesting to see,” Maryland – “Cardin/Clinic requirement,” [Ed. Note: might be a little home town influence here], Pepperdine – “strong faith commitment,” George Mason – “strength in law and economics.”

If this top 25 ranking isn’t for you, one expert who as been to almost every law school in the country, ranked law schools by best place to stay, shop, eat/drink. Here are those rankings. I think we definitely need to expand this ranking for next year, and get input from TaxProf readers.

Rank	School	Stay	Shop	Eat
1	UNC	Carolina Inn	Franklin Street	Lantern and Crunkleton
2	Tulane	Four Seasons	Royal Street	Cure
3	Northwestern	London House	Gold Coast	The Gage
4	Harvard	Liberty Hotel	Newberry Street
5	Georgetown	Conrad	City Center
6	Fordham	Peninsula	Saks
7	IU Indianapolis	Ironworks	Keystone	Petite Chou
8	UCLA	Huntley	The Grove
9	Iowa	Graduate	Downtown Mall	Birch Street Tavern
10	LSU	Cook Hotel	LSU Bookstore	Hayride Scandal

Donald Tobin is the former dean at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. He is now a professor of law at Maryland Carey Law and a member of LSAC Legal Education Consulting.

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