As anyone with any experience in higher education knows, the Princeton Review is a venerable name in rankings. I mean, it’s no U.S. News & World Report, but it still provides a noteworthy look at some of the important factors that create the law school experience.
Specifically, Princeton Review provides individual rankings across 14 ranking categories, identifying the top 10 law schools in each category. But that’s old news, since the 2020 rankings came out back in November… so why are we talking about it in February?
Well, that’s thanks to Pepperdine Law dean Paul L. Caron. He’s put together what he calls the Princeton Review’s overall law school rankings, ranking schools by giving equal weight to each of the Princeton Review’s most comprehensive rankings: Admissions Selectivity, Academic Experience, Professors: Teaching, Professors: Accessibility, and Career Rating.
So what’s the result? Well, while there are a lot of law schools that we usually see at the top of rankings, there are some surprises. Take, for example, BU and Notre Dame, shooting well above their USNWR ranking and coming in at a tie for 7th.
Here are the top 20 law schools:
| Law School | Selectivity | Academics | Teaching | Accessibility | Career | Average | |
| 1 | Virginia | 96 | 99 | 99 | 98 | 99 | 98.2 |
| 2 | Stanford | 97 | 98 | 98 | 97 | 98 | 97.6 |
| 3 | Chicago | 95 | 96 | 98 | 97 | 97 | 96.6 |
| Duke | 94 | 96 | 98 | 97 | 98 | 96.6 | |
| 5 | Michigan | 95 | 95 | 96 | 95 | 97 | 95.6 |
| 6 | Northwestern | 94 | 95 | 96 | 95 | 97 | 95.4 |
| 7 | Boston U. | 93 | 94 | 96 | 96 | 95 | 94.8 |
| Notre Dame | 92 | 95 | 97 | 97 | 93 | 94.8 | |
| NYU | 93 | 93 | 95 | 94 | 99 | 94.8 | |
| 10 | Boston College | 92 | 94 | 96 | 97 | 94 | 94.6 |
| Vanderbilt | 92 | 93 | 97 | 97 | 94 | 94.6 | |
| 12 | Columbia | 95 | 93 | 95 | 92 | 97 | 94.4 |
| Cornell | 94 | 93 | 96 | 94 | 95 | 94.4 | |
| Georgetown | 93 | 95 | 95 | 94 | 95 | 94.4 | |
| 15 | Georgia | 94 | 96 | 97 | 96 | 88 | 94.2 |
| Harvard | 97 | 94 | 94 | 88 | 98 | 94.2 | |
| Texas | 93 | 94 | 95 | 95 | 94 | 94.2 | |
| 18 | UC-Berkeley | 94 | 93 | 94 | 93 | 96 | 94 |
| 19 | Pennsylvania | 95 | 92 | 92 | 92 | 97 | 93.6 |
| 20 | USC | 94 | 92 | 93 | 93 | 95 | 93.4 |
You can check out the rest of the ranking (#21-100) at Tax Prof Blog.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).