Get Ready to Look Behind the Numbers As Rankings Season Swings Into Gear!

Law School Rankings. Pretty to hard to ignore, especially this time of year. U.S. News & World Report just published the new 2011 law school rankings, and while there’s a few schools within the Top 14 that showed a bit of movement (for example, NYU and Chicago flipped positions at #5 and #6; UC-Berkeley down a spot, Penn up one spot), much remains the same within this group. Yale holds it’s #1 ranking and the Top 14 remain the Top 14.

While there’s more notable movement elsewhere in the rankings (for example, Hofstra moved from #100 to #86), here’s how the Top 20 shake out:

1. Yale
2. Harvard
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Chicago
6. NYU
7. Berkeley
9. Michigan
10. UVA
11. Duke
13. Cornell
14. Georgetown
15. UCLA
15. UT – Austin
17. Vanderbilt
18. USC (Gould)
19. Washington University in St. Louis
20. George Washington

While the U.S. News rankings may be the best-known of the bunch, there are several lists out there that rate and rank law schools. What do the different rankings measure? What criteria are used by those compiling the rankings and what methodologies do they use? How can law school applicants use the information provided by rankings?

We’ve got a podcast coming out soon that takes a close look at rankings to give you answers to these questions. We talk with experts who collect the data, compile the information and publish rankings and rankings databases to help law school applicants figure out the best way to use this information.

Here’s a look at our guest line-up for this show:

•Robert Morse, Director of Data Research for U.S. News & World Report’s, Best Law Schools
•Robert Franek, Senior Vice President and Publisher, The Princeton Review’s The Best 172 Law Schools
•Brian Dalton, Managing Editor, Vault.com’s Top 25 Law Schools
•Don Macaulay, President and Founder, AdmissionsDean.com

Stay tuned for the full show!