BYU and University of Utah tie in U.S. News law school rankings

SALT LAKE CITY – For the first time in its more than 25 years of publicizing grad school rankings, the U.S. News & World Report has given law schools at the University of Utah and at Brigham Young University the same score, constituting a tie for the two rival institutions.

In its latest ranking of America's Best Graduate Schools, both the J. Reuben Clark Law School and the S.J. Quinney College of Law earned 42nd place out of the 100 schools across the country the magazine ranked. There are 200 American Bar Association-accredited law schools in the U.S. Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Columbia top the U.S. News list, as usual, but officials at both Utah schools are proud to be considered among such great institutions.

"I hope everyone appreciates how extraordinary it is for a state of this size to have two great, nationally recognized law schools," U. law school dean Hiram Chodosh wrote in an e-mail. "The Y. had been much higher in the rankings, and we have climbed 15 spots in three years."

BYU's program fell from last year's stance as 41st in the nation, however, they have been in the top 50 of law and business schools for at least 16 years in a row, according to BYU spokesman Todd Hollingshead.

"At the U., we are committed to improving the human condition through critical insights and research on major problems, training the next generation of leaders through innovations in legal education, and providing direct service to local, national and global communities," Chodosh said, adding that the results of such include providing more than 30,000 hours of student service each year and the completion of a multimillion dollar research project in Baghdad.

The rankings, he said, "reflect some important metrics — the qualifications and selectivity of each entering class, peer and professional reputation, career placement, student-faculty ratio, resources per student and other factors — and do not directly reflect many others. Because law schools are complex, rankings provide a simple, though necessarily imperfect proxy for value, and against the challenge of so much to know about any particular school, it is easier for everyone to attach to a single number that attempts to rank quality."

Although schools do not rely on the rankings to specifically validate an institution or program, Chodosh said it is nice to be noted for any accomplishment through the years.