THE U.S. NEWS TOP RATED LAW SCHOOLS  THE TOP FORTY-FOUR OF THE NINETIES

The March 1990 to March 1993 rankings were limited to the top 25 law schools; only 18 law schools were ranked in the top 25 for all of these four years. As the following table makes abundantly clear, those eighteen law schools were clearly the top 18 law schools of the nineties and, as it turns out for, also for the second millennium up to at least April 2007.      In the following table, the average rank for each of these eighteen law schools is simply the average of their ten rankings from March 1990 to March 1999 (inclusive). For the law schools that were ranked in at least six but at most nine of the ten rankings from March 1990 to March 1999 (inclusive), we calculated their average rank using the average of their six best rankings; these six rankings are in a lavender-filled cell.      The color coding for the top eighteen law schools indicates a pattern (e.g. the grey indicates that, with the exception of March 1997, from March 1992 to, at least, March 1999 inclusively, Harvard and Stanford were consistently ranked second or third, in some order. All these color-coded patterns have continued into the next millennium.

Nov Mar Apr Mar Mar Mar Mar Mar Mar Mar Mar   Aver   LAW SCHOOL 1987 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999   Rank   Yale U (CT) 1.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1     1.05   Harvard U (MA) 1.5 5 2 2 2 2 2.5 2 2 2.5 2.5   2.45   Stanford U (CA) 4.5 3 4 3 3 3 2.5 3 4 2.5 2.5   3.05   U Chicago  6 2 3 4 4 4 4 4 3 4.5 6   3.85   Columbia U (NY) 4.5 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4.5 5   4.85   New York U  9 6 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 6 4   6.00   U Michigan 3 7 6 6 7 8 9 7 7 9.5 8.5   7.50   Duke U (NC) 12 8 9 9 9 7 9 10 10 9.5 8.5   8.90   U Virginia  8 10 8 8 8 14 7 9 9 9.5 7   8.95   U Pennsylvania  10 9 10 10 11 9 11.5 8 11 9.5 12.5   10.2   UC Berkeley  7 13 12 12 12 10 9 12.5 8 7 10.5   10.6   Georgetown U (DC) 13 12 11 11 10 13 13 12.5 14 13 14   12.4   Cornell U (NY) 15 14 13 14 14 11 14 11 12 13 10.5   12.7   Northwestern U (IL) 16 11 14 13 13 12 11.5 14 13 13 12.5   12.7   Vanderbilt U (TN)   15 17 16 16 15 16 16 17 16 16.5   16.1   U Southern California 17.5 17 16 18 18 18 15 15 15 15 18.5   16.6   UCLA 14 18 18 17 17 16 24 17 16 17 16.5   17.7   U Texas, Austin  11 16 15 15 15 21 17 18 18 31 15   18.1                                 U Minnesota, TC  19    22.5 21 25 17 18 21 23 18 18.5   18.9   Washington and Lee U   24.5       23 21 20 20.5 19 20   20.6   U Illinois, UC 17.5 24.5          28 20 19 19 20.5 23.5   21.1   U Iowa      19 24.5 23.5 19 19 33 28 24 23.5   21.3   Boston College    20   22.5 19 24 26 26 22 22 27   21.6   Emory U (GA)   23.5       22 25 23.5 29 26.5 28   24.8   U Washington        22.5   25 34 23.5 25 23 25.5   24.1   George Washington U   23.5 22.5 24.5 21 44 22 22 24 20.5 25.5   21.9   U Notre Dame (IN)   19 24.5 20 20 26 39 25 20.5 26.5 21.5   20.9   U Georgia