The U.S. News & World Report law school rankings have changed quite a bit over the years. In 1987, the methodology included just one metric—the percentage of law school deans who ranked the school, in their subjective estimation, as a "top 10 law school." See below the resulting top 20. As a bonus, you can also see what tuition rates looked like in 1987—the highest figure of which is under $14,000 (Columbia), and the lowest of which is just $4,500 (UT Austin—which is out-of-state) (note that all public law school figures are out-of-state tuition).
| Rank | School | Rating | Tuition |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harvard | 91.7% | $11,400 |
| 1 | Yale | 91.7% | $12,450 |
| 3 | Michigan | 88.5% | $11,400 |
| 4 | Columbia | 84.4% | $13,496 |
| 4 | Stanford | 84.4% | $12,180 |
| 6 | U Chicago | 83.3% | $12,525 |
| 7 | UC Berkeley | 77.1% | $5,796 |
| 6 | UVA | 57.3% | $7,504 |
| 9 | NYU | 56.3% | $13,200 |
| 10 | U Penn | 42.7% | $12,300 |
| 11 | UT Austin | 32.3% | $4,500 |
| 12 | Duke | 31.3% | $12,100 |
| 13 | Georgetown | 25.0% | $11,500 |
| 14 | UCLA | 17.7% | $5,746 |
| 15 | Cornell | 16.7% | $12,750 |
| 16 | Northwestern | 14.6% | $12,681 |
| 17 | Illinois | 7.3% | $9,394 |
| 17 | USC | 7.3% | $12,900 |
| 19 | Minnesota | 6.3% | $6,621 |
| 20 | Wisconsin | 5.2% | $7,252 |