Best Law Schools for Moot Court

The Winter 2017 edition of The National Jurist features a story on the law schools with the best moot court programs.  The story recognizes that the schools with the best programs are not always the highest ranked programs according to U.S. News & World Report.  Taking data from the University of Houston Law Center's Blakely Advocacy Institute, which ranks moot court programs yearly based on their performance in moot court programs, The National Jurist identified the top 20 law schools for moot court programs.  As The National Jurist notes, only two of the schools in the top 20 moot court programs are highly ranked by U.S. News--Georgetown and Columbia.  

Georgetown's moot court ranking is no surprise.  As a very large law school, it has be ability to send multiple teams to many competitions.  While schools must perform well at competitions to receive points in the Houston Law rankings, there is something to be said about sending teams to multiple competitions.  South Texas Houston, Florida Coastal, Texas Tech, and Chicago-Kent--four schools high in the moot court rankings--are also known to send out a large number of competition teams.

Given the ABA's increasing focus on practical skills, I hope that we will see more schools build successful moot court programs.  The list of the top 20 from the article, courtesy of the TaxProfBlog,  is below.