Penn Law School ranks seventh in U.S., holding same position since 2010 rankings

Penn Law School ranked seventh in the U.S. News & World Report's 2021 ranking of law schools in the United States.

Penn Law has spent more than a decade in the seventh-place spot — the school has held this position since U.S. News & World Report's 2010 rankings.

Yale Law School continued its more than three-decade-long streak atop the ranking. Stanford Law School and Harvard Law School occupied the second and third spots, respectively. Columbia Law School and the University of Chicago Law School are tied for fourth place, with Columbia moving up one spot from last year's rankings.

U.S. News & World Report also released law school specialty rankings. Penn Law ranked sixth in criminal law and business/corporate law and eleventh in constitutional law.

The U.S. News & World Report's ranking of law schools is based on an average of 12 categories, each of which is weighted at different values. The data for this year's rankings was collected in fall 2019 and early 2020.

The "quality assessment" category is weighted the highest at 0.40 and is determined by considering an assessment of the school by peer law school deans as well as practicing lawyers and judges. The "selectivity" category is weighted at 0.25, considering median LSAT and GRE scores, median undergraduate GPA, and acceptance rate. 

In November 2019, Penn's Board of Trustees changed the name of Penn Law School to the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School following a $125 million donation from the W. P. Carey Foundation — the largest donation to any law school.   

After extensive backlash from Penn Law students, faculty, and alumni, however, the University announced that it would change the school's short-form name back to "Penn Law" from "Carey Law." The dean of the law school announced that the shortened name will become "Penn Carey Law" in fall 2022.