Rankings of Law Schools by Student Quality

Yesterday, Texas Law Prof Brian Leiter released his 2006 Rankings of Law Schools by Student Quality. Leiter's study ranks the top 40 law schools by the 75th percentile LSAT (the top quarter). You can guess at the usual suspects for the Top 20 law schools (or view the table below).

Several schools made noticeable improvements in the rankings but none more so than the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign which improved its ranking by 13 places, from 33 in 2005 to 20 in 2006. Other schools with significant gains are Vanderbilt (from 26 to 20), Wake Forest (from 35 to 29) and Baylor (from being unranked in 2005 to 35 in 2006).

Several law schools dropped noticeably in the rankings, including University of Washington, Seattle (from 27 in 2005 to 34 in 2006) and University of California, Hastings (from 30 in 2005 to 36 in 2006). For the 2005 Rankings by Student Quality and other ranking reports, visit Leiter's Law School Rankings.

Top 20 Law Schools by 75th Percentile LSAT, 2005 & 2006
	School	2006	2005
	Harvard University	1	1
	Yale University	2	2
	Columbia University	3	3
	New York University	4	4
+3	University of Chicago	5	8
	Stanford University	6	5
	University of Virginia	7	6
	University of Pennsylvania	8	7
	Northwestern University	9	10
	Georgetown University	10	9
	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	11	11
	University of California, Berkeley	12	13
	University of California, Los Angeles	12	13
	Duke University	14	12
	University of Texas, Austin	15	16
	Cornell University	16	15
	Fordham University	17	17
+4	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	18	24
+3	Washington University, St. Louis	18	21
+13	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	20	33
	University of Southern California	20	19
+6	Vanderbilt University	20	26
NR: not ranked in 2005