Yale Law School slipped to second position in U.S. News & World Report’s latest law school rankings, losing its top spot to Stanford Law School. This is the first time in 36 years that Yale has not topped the list. Yale and Stanford had shared the No. 1 position from 2023 to 2025.
Yale is now tied at No. 2 with the University of Chicago Law School, which rose from No. 3. A spokesperson from Yale Law said the school is “focused on providing a rigorous and excellent legal education and increasing access and opportunity to law school and the profession,” according to Reuters.
Yale has seen a slightly lower employment rate, which may have contributed to the drop in rankings. This year, 94.9% of Yale graduates were in long-term, full-time jobs that either require bar passage or for which a law degree is an advantage within 10 months after graduation, down from 95.5% in 2025. Yale’s bar passage rates and median LSAT score were largely unchanged.
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U.S. News’ law school rankings aim to measure the overall quality of the nation’s 198 American Bar Association-accredited law schools, making them a key benchmark for students and employers.
Yale’s decline is one of several shifts in this year’s so-called T-14, the group of schools that traditionally occupy the top 14 spots in U.S. News rankings. The University of California, Berkeley School of Law, which has historically held a place in the top 14, slipped to No. 16.
“The change in our ranking is a result of shifts in the U.S. News formula, not any meaningful change in Berkeley Law,” said the school’s dean, Erwin Chemerinsky.
Georgetown University Law Center, which also typically ranks in the top 14, fell to No. 18. It had also ranked outside the T-14 in 2023. Cornell Law School is among this year’s biggest movers, climbing five spots to No. 13 after dropping out of the T-14 last year. Vanderbilt University Law School rose two places to No. 12 this year.
The rankings have been especially volatile since U.S. News revised its methodology four years ago in response to a boycott by several elite schools. Institutions that participated in the boycott, including Yale and Berkeley, argued that the previous ranking system negatively affected student diversity and affordability.
U.S. News now places greater emphasis on data that schools report annually to the American Bar Association. As a result, even small changes in bar passage and employment rates can lead to larger ranking shifts, since top schools tend to have very similar outcomes in these areas.