Below are the top 40 law schools according to the new U.S. News rankings of law schools, based on their somewhat byzantine formula for calculating the overall rank. Next to each school, I’ve include three additional pieces of information:

The school’s rank for quality of faculty based on a survey last Spring of leading legal scholars who were presented with a current faculty list.

The 75th percentile LSAT of students enrolled at the school, as reported by US News. (This is a crude measure of student quality, but for this purpose, the best we’ve got. Anyone in law teaching knows that while the average student with a 158 LSAT is not as good as the average student with a 168, the same generalizations cease to hold between, e.g., the 168 and the 163, as LSAC itself recognizes [which is why the report the scores in bands, such as 163-168].)

The size of the student body, rounded to the nearest hundred.

There have been, to be sure, some changes in faculty quality since last year: Berkeley, Northwestern and USC have taken some hits since last Spring’s survey, for example, Emory has improved (additions of Martha Fineman and Michael Perry), and Duke has had a lot of turnover which probably washes out (adding Chemerinsky and Salzman, for example, but losing Van Alstyne, Byer, and Culp), but overall I would expect few significant changes (we’ll do a new survey in the fall in any case).

1. Yale University (#1 in faculty quality, 175 LSAT, 200 students)
2. Harvard University (#2 in faculty quality, 174 LSAT, 600 students)
3. Stanford University (#4 in faculty quality, 171 LSAT, 200 students)
4. Columbia University (#5 in faculty quality, 173 LSAT, 300 students)
5. New York University (#5 in faculty quality, 173 LSAT, 400 students)
6. University of Chicago (#2 in faculty quality, 171 LSAT, 200 students)
7. University of Michigan (#8 in faculty quality, 169 LSAT, 400 students)
7. University of Pennsylvania (#11 in faculty quality, 170 LSAT, 300 students)
9. University of Virginia (#10 in faculty quality, 170 LSAT, 400 students)
10. Duke University (#17 in faculty quality, 169 LSAT, 200 students)
10. Northwestern University (#14 in faculty quality, 170 LSAT, 200 students)
12. Cornell University (#14 in faculty quality, 168 LSAT, 200 students)
13. University of California, Berkeley (#7 in faculty quality, 168 LSAT, 200 students)
14. Georgetown University (#12 in faculty quality, 170 LSAT, 400 students*)
15. University of Texas, Austin (#8 in faculty quality, 166 LSAT, 500 students)
16. Univ. of California, Los Angeles (#14 in faculty quality, 168 LSAT, 300 students)
17. Vanderbilt University (#18 in faculty quality, 166 LSAT, 200 students)
18. University of Southern California (#14 in faculty quality, 167 LSAT, 200 students)
19. University of Minnesota (#21 in faculty quality, 165 LSAT, 200 students)
20. George Washington University (#22 in faculty quality, 167 LSAT, 400 students)
20. University of Notre Dame (not in top 40 in faculty quality, 166 LSAT, 200 students)
20. Washington University, St. Louis (#29 in faculty quality, 166 LSAT, 200 students)

23. Boston University (#19 in faculty quality, 166 LSAT, 300 students)
23. Emory University (#29 in faculty quality, 165 LSAT, 200 students)
23. University of Iowa (#19 in faculty quality, 164 LSAT, 200 students)
23. Washington & Lee University (#32 in faculty quality, 167 LSAT, 200 students)
27. University of Illinois (#22 in faculty quality, 164 LSAT, 200 students)
27. University of North Carolina (#32 in faculty quality, 164 LSAT, 200 students)
29. Boston College (#32 in faculty quality, 165 LSAT, 300 students)
29. College of William & Mary (#37 in faculty quality, 165 LSAT, 200 students)
31. University of Georgia (not in top 40 in faculty quality, 164 LSAT, 200 students)
31. University of Wisconsin, Madison (#22 in faculty quality, 164 LSAT, 300 students)
33. University of California, Davis (#32 in faculty quality, 163 LSAT, 200 students)
34. Brigham Young University (not in top 40 in faculty quality, 166 LSAT, 200 students)
34. Fordham University (#26 in faculty quality, 167 LSAT, 300 students)
34. University of Washington (not in top 40 in faculty quality, 166 LSAT, 200 students)
34. Wake Forest University (not in top 40 in faculty quality, 163 LSAT, 200 students)
38. George Mason University (#26 in faculty quality, 165 LSAT, 100 students)
38. University of California, Hastings (#29 in faculty quality, 165 LSAT, 400 students)
40. Indiana University, Bloomington (#40 in faculty quality, 164 LSAT, 200 students)
40. University of Alabama (not in top 40 in faculty quality, 163 LSAT, 200 students)

*Note on Georgetown: this is the figure for the full-time students enrolled each year (rounded, as with the others); Georgetown admits a large number of part-time students, whose numerical credentials are significantly weaker, but which are also not counted by US News. (George Mason also has a part-time program.)

It pays to be a small school when it comes to US News. Beyond noting that, I’ll let the reader make what they will of the data.

Some other startling contrasts:

US News ranks Rutgers-Camden 72nd, though the school ranked 37th in faculty quality, and has a 75th percentile LSAT of 163 with about 200 students. (Other schools with much stronger faculties than their US News rank might suggest are Arizona State, Cardozo, Tulane, Chicago-Kent, Brooklyn, Rutgers-Newark, and Miami, among many, many others.)

At 38th, George Mason is ranked well below its faculty quality which puts it around the top 25. It’s 75th percentile LSAT is strong (165), but that is based on a vanishingly small full-time class (not much more than 100 students). GMU reports an acceptance rate of 9.2%, putting it third for acceptance rate behind Yale and Stanford. GMU also reports more than 99% of its graduates employed, despite the fact that only 73% passed the bar. There are ways in which all these numbers could, in fact, be fully supported and accurate, but it is obvious to everyone that George Mason is “gaming the system.” That is not a criticism: the system deserves to be gamed, since it is intellectually bankrupt. But the odd thing is that George Mason ranks 38th not because of the quality of its faculty and students (which would warrant it), but because the folks running the school are smart, and they have, no doubt correctly, concluded that it is far better to be able to say “we’re a top 40 law school according to US News,” than to endlessly explain why “we ought to be in the top 40, except US News uses a bankrupt methodology.”

And that’s the basic, sad truth about the whole US News game.