The top law schools in the U.S.

Yale Law School is continuing its two-decade run atop U.S. News's rankings of Best Law Schools. Little else changed among the top schools, as Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Columbia Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School round out the top five, in order, for the second consecutive year.

A new school has cracked the top 14, otherwise known as the "T14" in the legal community. The top 14 is not an official subset of rankings, but has continued to contain the same 14 schools, in varying order, since the rankings were first produced. Schools in the T14 tend to be held in the highest regard by law firms and within the law school community. This year, the University of Texas-Austin School of Law tied the Georgetown Law Center for the 14th spot — both earning a total score of 77. The remainder of the T14 schools all attained an overall score of 80 or more.

While UT-Austin's jump carries significance when viewed through a historical lens, the school only rose one spot from 2011 when it tied for 15th with the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law, and other schools made larger jumps in rank overall. The University of Maryland School of Law, for instance, jumped from 48th last year to 42nd this year and was among the biggest movers of the top 50 schools. The University of California-Davis School of Law also made a significant leap, moving from 28th overall to 23rd.

With environmental and healthcare issues making headlines and staying on the forefront of many lawmakers' minds since the Obama administration came to power, lawyers who can ably navigate the nuances of these specialties have become increasingly valuable. U.S. News asked professors in these fields to rank schools on a specialty-by-specialty basis. Vermont Law School, Lewis & Clark College's Northwestern School of Law, and Pace University Law School all earned top billing for environmental law. The St. Louis University School of Law, Boston University School of Law, and Maryland are this year's highest ranked health law schools. Beyond environmental and health law, the surveyed faculty also ranked specialties including dispute resolution, international law, and tax law, among others.

Though the law school rankings have been in place for more than 20 years, this year U.S. News decided to get a new perspective on which law programs should be considered the nation's elite. Hiring officials at firms that made the 2010 Best Law Firms rankings were asked to rate schools on a five point scale, and Harvard, with a 4.9 average reputation score, edged out both Stanford and Yale for the top spot, which tied for second with a 4.8 average.

US News Best Law Schools, 2012
Rank	School	State	Total Enrollment	Tuition & Fees  2010-11
1	Yale University	CT	629	Full-time:  $50,750 per year
2	Harvard University	MA	1733	Full-time: $45,450 per year
3	Stanford University	CA	571	Full-time: $46,581 per year
4	Columbia University	NY	1344	Full-time: $50,428 per year
5	University of Chicago	IL	634	Full-time: $45,405 per year
6	New York University	NY	1431	Full-time: $46,840 per year
7	University of Michigan-Ann Arbor	MI	1134	In-state, full-time: $44,840 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $47,840 per year
7	University of Pennsylvania	PA	803	Full-time: $48,362 per year
9	University of California-Berkeley	CA	916	In-state, full-time: $44,244 per year;  Out-of-state, full-time: $52,245 per year
9	University of Virginia	VA	1106	In-state, full-time: $42,500 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $47,500 per year
11	Duke University	NC	681	Full-time: $47,722 per year
12	Northwestern University	IL	817	Full-time: $49,714 per year
13	Cornell University	NY	615	Full-time: $51,150 per year
14	Georgetown University	DC	1960	Full-time: $45,105 per year
14	University of Texas-Austin	TX	1154	In-state, full-time: $28,669 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $44,638 per year

 

Courtesy: yahoo.com