Hi everybody!

I have seen a lot of people asking about rankings and, as we all know, USnews is the ranking for US law schools. However, it is good to check US News under a 10 year perspective and not really just considering the last issue, usually published in the website.
Although we (foreigns) are not used to follow this ranking, because americans have been following it for decades, it can give us a sense of the real prestige of certain law schools.
We (foreigns) in some situations get the wrong information from friends, alumnis of certain schools or even movies (It is interesting to note that certain schools - like Yale, Stanford and others - dont allow production of films in their Campi, and for this reason they are less "advertised" in the movies than Harvard and Columbia - for example. As an interesting example, for those of you who watched legally blonde, the book was based on experiences of a student in Stanford. But because it would be too expensive to reproduce Stanford campus, the film was recorded in Harvard).

The ranking is below (first 1999-2003 and second 2004-2008).

From 1999 to 2003
School 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Yale 1 1 1 1 1
Stanford 2 2 2 2 2
Harvard 2 2 3 3 3
Columbia 4 5 5 4 4
NYU 6 4 4 5 5
Chicago 4 6 6 6 6
Penn 8 12 12 10 7
Berkeley 7 10 8 9 7
Michigan 8 8 7 7 7
Virginia 8 7 8 7 7
Duke 8 8 10 10 12
Ntw. Chic. 12 12 12 13 11
Cornell 12 10 10 12 13
Georgeto 12 14 14 14 14
UCLA 17 16 16 16 16
Texas 29 15 15 15 15
USC 15 18 17 18 18
Vanderbilt16 16 18 17 17
GW 20 25 23 23 25
Minnesota18 18 19 19 18

From 2004 to 2008
School 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Yale 1 1 1 1 1
Stanford 2 3 3 2 2
Harvard 3 2 2 3 2
Columbia 4 4 4 4 5
NYU 5 5 5 4 4
Chicago 6 6 6 6 6
Penn 7 7 7 7 6
Berkeley 10 13 11 8 8
Michigan 7 7 8 8 8
Virginia 9 9 8 8 10
Duke 12 10 11 11 10
Ntw. Chic.12 10 10 12 12
Cornell 10 12 11 13 13
Georgeto 14 14 14 14 14
UCLA 16 16 15 15 15
Texas 15 15 15 16 18
USC 18 18 18 17 16
Vanderbilt17 17 17 17 16
GW 22 20 20 19 22
Minnesota19 19 19 19 20

hi gloss,
thanks for that! i think it's very useful for all of us.
and yes: i know legally blond and i really love it. this thursday i will watch it on dvd with some friends of mine to celebrate my admission to duke... :-)
best wishes!

There's also a nice chart about the past ranking positions of the top 25 US law schools:
http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/images/USNews-Chart4.html

It's from an article, which you can find here: http://www.llm-guide.com/article/6/university-ranking-and-its-discontents (see bottom of article "Chart of the Past Decade").

Florian, are you accepting Duke's offer ? Why did you choose Duke over others ? I'm deliberating whether to accept Duke's offer.

hi mnementh,
i already have accepted their offer for duke was my first choice. other universities i applied to: U of Illinois, UCLondon, KCLondon. compared to those universities duke has the highest academic reputation.
other reasons: i want to pursue my dissertation under the supervision of two professors there (most important), small llm class, great campus and sport facilities, nice weather.