The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School dropped from No. 4 to No. 5 for the first time in two years in the 2025 U.S. News & World Report rankings of best law schools.
The list, publicly released on April 8, placed the University of Virginia School of Law at No. 4 — the spot occupied by Penn Carey Law last year. This year’s rankings marks three years since the law school first announced that it would stop submitting data to the rankings.
U.S. News ranked Stanford Law School and Yale Law School in a tie for first place, with the University of Chicago Law School ranked No. 3. Notably, Cornell University dropped out of the top 14 and is now ranked No. 18.
Of the top five ranked schools, only the University of Chicago Law School responded to the U.S. News official survey to report its data. Penn Carey Law announced in December 2022 that it would no longer participate in the U.S. News rankings, citing concerns with the ranking’s methodology.
“In the interest of greater transparency, we will make relevant data public so that anyone can see the inputs that make Penn Carey Law a leading law school and how our alumni launch careers in every sector of the legal profession,” the school wrote in a 2022 statement announcing the change.
According to their website, U.S. News surveyed nearly 200 law schools accredited by the American Bar Association in fall 2024 and early 2025 as part of their ranking process and received 154 responses. The rankings also incorporated data that law schools are required by the American Bar Association to publicly disclose.
Schools that did not respond to the U.S. News survey are noted as such at the top of their profiles in the rankings.
The methodology evaluated each school's rank by scoring it on 10 factors, ranging from placement success and bar passage rates to faculty and library resources. The total scores were then standardized and rescaled so that the No. 1 school received a score of 100. Subsequent rankings were assigned as a percentage of the top score. The rankings also incorporated peer reviews from institutions evaluating one another.
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