UT Law School Ranked 15th Best in US, #1 in Texas

The University of Texas at Austin School of Law ranked 15th among law schools rated by U.S. News and World Report in their 2016 Best Law Schools. The UT School of Law was also the top ranked law school in Texas. A number of other Texas law schools were also included in the top tier. Yale University had the highest ranked school of law while Harvard University and Stanford University tied for second.

UT earned the same fifteenth-place ranking in 2015. No other law school in Texas ranked in the top twenty five.

Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law was 46th, Baylor University School of Law was tied for 56th, the University of Houston Law Center was tied for 59th, and the Texas Tech University School of Law tied for 118th. South Texas College of Law and Texas A&M University School of Law were part of a five-way tie for 149th. These rankings were all consistent with the previous year’s rankings, with most of the Texas schools dropping just a few places.

The two remaining law schools in Texas, St. Mary’s University School of Law and the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University were both included in an unranked list of “second tier” law schools.

Three Texas schools received recognition for their specialty programs. For trial advocacy training programs, Baylor ranked third in the U.S. and South Texas was in a four-way tie for sixth. University of Houston was honored in two categories, ranking 8th for health care law and 6th for intellectual property law.

The consistently high ranking of the UT School of Law and its public tuition prices mean that competition is very high for each class of admitted students. As Breitbart Texas reported, UT Regent Wallace Hall has been pushing for an investigation during the past few years into UT’s admissions policies, as evidence continues to surface about legislators, lobbyists, and other political powerful people using influence to gain admittance for students who likely would not otherwise make the cut.

Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter @rumpfshaker.