# Rankings Drama Hits Law Schools, Law Firms Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/above-the-law-thinking-like-a-lawyer-872228/rankings-drama-hits-law-schools-law-firms Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/above-the-law-thinking-like-a-lawyer-872228/rankings-drama-hits-law-schools-law-firms.md Podcast: [Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer](https://stenobird.com/podcast/above-the-law-thinking-like-a-lawyer-872228) Published: 2026-04-15T15:20:00+00:00 Episode link: https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/thinking-like-a-lawyer/2026/04/rankings-drama-hits-law-schools-law-firms Audio file: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/LTN2944187251.mp3?updated=1776266456 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/above-the-law-thinking-like-a-lawyer-872228/episodes/rankings-drama-hits-law-schools-law-firms Duration seconds: 2050 ## Resource And a crazy billing story. ----- It's that time of year where publications look deep into the souls of complex, nuanced legal institutions and assign them a fixed ranking. U.S. News and World Report issued its latest law school rankings and for the first time ever, Yale has lost its death grip on first place. The rest of the T14 -- which isn't really a thing at this point, since its whole argument for being was that the same 14 schools never fell out of the top 14 -- is also topsy-turvy, with the HYS-CCN model scrambled by the likes of Penn, Duke, and UVA. Are the rankings just busted, or are they catching up with a new reality? At the same time, Vault put out its rankings of law firms based on prestige and while the list looks familiar, the firms that made deals with Donald Trump took a hit. And none more than Paul Weiss, which seems to be taking much more reputational heat for these deals than the other capitulators. Finally, we talk about billing and the time-space continuum. ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/above-the-law-thinking-like-a-lawyer-872228/episodes/rankings-drama-hits-law-schools-law-firms/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/above-the-law-thinking-like-a-lawyer-872228/rankings-drama-hits-law-schools-law-firms.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.