Finally, it's there. Now, please, do make up your mind about it...

Change of denomination has not yet taken place - however, the link on LLM Guide already leads to "Best law schools ranked IN 2009"...

Any major surprises?

Stanford is only third, Harvard solely on second position.
Chicago moved up to sixth place (sharing it with Berkeley).

UVA drops a spot, although having a higher rating.

The Absurdity of US News
http://lightandliberty.rationalmind.net/2009/04/the-absurdity-of-usnews.html

The 53% Ranking (Difference Between Ranking and US News)
1. Yale (0)
2. Harvard (0)
3. Stanford (0)
3. Columbia (+1)
5. Chicago (+1)
6. New York University (-1)
7. University of Virginia (+3)
8. University of California - Berkeley (-2)
8. University of Michigan (+1)
10. University of Pennsylvania (-1)
11. Duke University (-1)
11. Georgetown University (+3)
13. Cornell University (0)
14. Northwestern University (-4)
15. University of Texas (0)
16. University of California - Los Angeles (-1)
16. Vanderbilt University (+1)
18. Washington University - St. Louis (+1)
18. University of Southern California (0)
18. Emory University (+2)
21. George Washington University (+7)

No big changes in the U.S News Ranking it seems.

top 5 changes:

Stanford went down in ranking, up in points.
NYU gained 2 points and now it's only 1 point behind Columbia.

Last year:
1. Yale Law School (100)
2. (tie) Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School (91)
4. Columbia Law School (88)
5. New York University School of Law (85)

1. Yale Law School (100)
2.Harvard Law School, (95)
3.Stanford Law School (93)
4. Columbia Law School (88)
5. New York University School of Law (87)

many law schools seem to have "gain" some points... could it rather be because yale's 100 isn't as high as previously ?
(I'm not a ranking expert - maybe usnews answered that somewhere)

<blockquote>many law schools seem to have "gain" some points... could it rather be because yale's 100 isn't as high as previously ?
(I'm not a ranking expert - maybe usnews answered that somewhere)</blockquote>

The score assigned by US News is relative so whenever the gap between #1 and #2 decreases, it means both that #1 declined and #2 improved.
The actual reason behind this score fluctuation could be anything. Their formula is so stupid and arbitrary that a .5 difference in Yale's employment rate changes the score, and therefore ranking, of every other law school.

"the fact that U.S. News insists on assigning an overall score of 100 to the top-scoring school and an overall score of zero to the bottom-score school, no matter what, means that any change in one of those schools’ numbers will shift the entire scale against which other schools are measured.
If any Yale number changes, Yale’s overall score cannot change. Instead, “100” is effectively redefined to mean something new. This, in turn, means that every other overall score (except zero) is redefined as well. Conversely, if a number at the bottom anchor changes, “zero” is effectively redefined to mean something new –as is every other overall score except 100. As a result, changes in input variables for Yale or the bottom anchor, particularly in higher-weighted variables, can trigger extensive random changes across the system."
Source: page 19 of http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=937017

Another "funny fact": US News takes into account the difference between bar passage rate and state average in the state where the highest % of students from a given school sat the bar.
So if 60% of school X grads sat the bar in NY (77% state average) and 40% in CA (66% state average) with a 100% passage rate in each state, for the purpose of US News ranking, school X will have a "+23%" bar score.
And if 60% of school Y grads sat the bar in CA and 40% in NY with a 95% passage rate in each state, school Y will have a "+29%" US News bar score.
In other words, US News will rank Y above X even though X beat Y in both states.