The Long, Hard, Nearly Impossible Climb to Reach Elite Status: Top 30 Law Schools, 2002-2011

According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations only 37 law schools have reached the Top 30 as ranked by US News during the last 10 years. 13 law schools have been ranked in the Top 10 and 24 schools in the Top 20 at least once since 2002. There is a long, hard, nearly impossible climb for lower ranked law schools to reach this elite status. Based on the data, one might say only Indiana-Bloomington appears to be achieving this ascent up the mountain.

The below table (click to enlarge) reports US News Law School rankings for the Top 30 by year, color-coded to show movement between ranks 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, and below 30. The schools are sorted by this year's ranking. The table also provides the 10-year average rank for each of the 37 schools that have been ranked in the Top 30 at least once between 2002 and 2011. Feel free to report any errors or omissions in comments to this post. [JH]