As anyone with any experience in higher education knows, the Princeton Review is a venerable name in rankings. I mean, it’s no U.S. News & World Report, but it still provides a noteworthy look at some of the important factors that create the law school experience.

Specifically, Princeton Review provides individual rankings across 14 ranking categories, identifying the top 10 law schools in each category. But that’s old news, since the 2020 rankings came out back in November… so why are we talking about it in February?

Well, that’s thanks to Pepperdine Law dean Paul L. Caron. He’s put together what he calls the Princeton Review’s overall law school rankings, ranking schools by giving equal weight to each of the Princeton Review’s most comprehensive rankings: Admissions Selectivity, Academic Experience, Professors: Teaching, Professors: Accessibility, and Career Rating.

So what’s the result? Well, while there are a lot of law schools that we usually see at the top of rankings, there are some surprises. Take, for example, BU and Notre Dame, shooting well above their USNWR ranking and coming in at a tie for 7th.

Here are the top 20 law schools:

Law School Selectivity Academics Teaching Accessibility Career Average 1 Virginia 96 99 99 98 99 98.2 2 Stanford 97 98 98 97 98 97.6 3 Chicago 95 96 98 97 97 96.6 Duke 94 96 98 97 98 96.6 5 Michigan 95 95 96 95 97 95.6 6 Northwestern 94 95 96 95 97 95.4 7 Boston U. 93 94 96 96 95 94.8 Notre Dame 92 95 97 97 93 94.8 NYU 93 93 95 94 99 94.8 10 Boston College 92 94 96 97 94 94.6 Vanderbilt 92 93 97 97 94 94.6 12 Columbia 95 93 95 92 97 94.4 Cornell 94 93 96 94 95 94.4 Georgetown 93 95 95 94 95 94.4 15 Georgia 94 96 97 96 88 94.2 Harvard 97 94 94 88 98 94.2 Texas 93 94 95 95 94 94.2 18 UC-Berkeley 94 93 94 93 96 94 19 Pennsylvania 95 92 92 92 97 93.6 20 USC 94 92 93 93 95 93.4

You can check out the rest of the ranking (#21-100) at Tax Prof Blog.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).