“I don’t think anybody cares,” Colin Dunkley LAW ’26 wrote to the News, adding that he suspects the rankings matter more for students at schools moving into and out of the top 14.
In this year’s U.S. News report, the Law School moved down to second place, where it is tied with the University of Chicago. Stanford now occupies the top spot.
Yale’s drop comes about four years after former Dean Heather Gerken decided that the Law School would no longer submit data to U.S. News for its rankings. At the time, she characterized the rankings as “profoundly flawed” in a statement published on a Law School webpage. She criticized the rankings for discouraging students from public service careers by classifying students who were awarded Yale’s post-graduate fellowships for public service as unemployed. Gerken did not respond to the News’ request for comment on Thursday.
Using public data, U.S. News continued to rank Yale Law School and other schools that stopped reporting data.
Several law students and professors largely dismissed the significance of the Law School’s new rank.