About Those Law School Rankings Acronyms

If you’ve spoken to other pre-law students about law school rankings, you’ve probably heard some obscure acronyms: HYS, CCN,andT14.
What do they mean? Glad you asked.

HYS

Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and Stanford Law School occupied the top three U.S. News & World Report rankings for over a decade, though Harvard recently fell to number five.

CCN

The next three spots used to be filled by the CCN schools: Columbia Law School, University of Chicago Law School, and New York University School of Law. UChicago recently rose to number three while Columbia dropped to number eight.

T14

T14 refers to the top 14 law schools. The group is fairly consistent, although UCLA and the University of Texas at Austin Law School have occasionally edged out Georgetown Law for the 14th spot in the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

The traditional T14 schools are as follows:

• Yale Law School (always #1)
• Stanford Law School (#1–3)
• Harvard Law School (#2–5)
• University of Chicago Law School (#3–5)
• Columbia Law School (#4–8)
• University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (#4–8)
• New York University School of Law (#5–6)
• Duke Law School (#5–11)
• University of California Berkeley Law School (#6–10)
• University of Virginia School of Law (#7–10)
• University of Michigan Law School (#7–10)
• Northwestern Law School (#10–12)
• Cornell Law School (#13–14)
• Georgetown Law (#13–15)

Now we can add the University of California Los Angeles School of Law to that list.