World Best Law Schools as ranked for 2013

Best Law Schools rankings as per US news have been finalized.  Yale Law School took the top spot in the 2013 edition of Best Law Schools, a place it's held since 1990. But contenders for the next two spots switched, with Stanford Law School outseating Harvard Law School for the first time since 2007. (In 2008 and 2009, the two schools were tied for the No. 2 spot.) 

Along with Yale, Stanford, and Harvard, 11 institutions that historically claim the top spots in the U.S. News rankings are known as the top 14 (T14), which isn't a designation by U.S. News but is widely known in the legal community. Some T14 schools shuffled: The University of California—Berkeley School of Law and the University of Virginia School of Law both moved up two spots to tie with the University of Pennsylvania Law School for 7th, while the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor Law School slid from 7th to 10th; Cornell Law School, now ranked 14th, and the Georgetown Law Center, at 13th, switched spots from last year's list. 

In the 2012 rankings, the University of Texas—Austin School of Law tied Georgetown at 14th, making it the only new school to have broken into the T14 since the comprehensive rankings methodology was created in 1990. After one year in the group, UT—Austin fell two spots to 16th in the rankings for 2013.

Some schools made larger moves in the newly released rankings. The Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law leapt to the 26th spot, up 14 spots from 40th last year, following a 15-spot jump from 55th two years before that. Last year's five-way tie for 30th dissolved in the 2013 rankings as the University of Washington School of Law moved 10 spots to 20th, while the Emory University School of Law and the Washington and Lee University School of Law both jumped six spots and remain tied at 24th. The Pepperdine University School of Law moved five spots to crack the top 50 (from 54th to 49th), and the University of Miami School of Law jumped eight spots, from 77th last year to 69th in the 2013 rankings.