In 2014, Law Street Media set out to redefine law school specialty rankings. We wanted to provide a mix of qualitative and quantitive information to prospective law school students who are interested in pursuing a particular specialty program while in law school, and we’re pretty happy to say we succeeded with our first cycle. We covered a number of different specialties–from the hugely popular and common criminal and tax programs, to smaller and more specialized fields like entertainment and real estate law. As our first three-year cycle of specialty rankings comes to a close, we wanted to take a few minutes to recognize the schools that consistently ranked at the top of our lists. Click on the schools below to see their highlights:

Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law,Georgetown University Law Center, University of Virginia School of Law , Fordham University School of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, University of Pennsylvania School of Law, University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, and Honorable Mentions.

Columbia Law School

Harvard Law School

New York University School of Law

Georgetown University Law Center

University of Virginia School of Law

Fordham University School of Law

Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law

University of Pennsylvania Law School

University of California – Los Angeles School of Law

Honorable Mentions

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post 2016 Law School Specialty Rankings: Who Came Out on Top? appeared first on Law Street.

Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Alexis Evans, Anneliese Mahoney, Julia Bryant, Sean Simon, Alex Simone, Inez Nicholson, Ashlee Smith, and Sam Reilly.

Click here for detailed ranking information for each of the Top 10 Law Schools for Tax Law.

Click here to see all the 2016 specialty rankings.

Click here for information on rankings methodology.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Top 10 Law Schools for Tax Law: #2 Harvard Law School appeared first on Law Street.

Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Alexis Evans, Hyunjae Ham, Symon Rowlands and Toni Keddell.

Click here to read more coverage on Law Street’s Law School Specialty Rankings 2015.

Click here for information on rankings methodology.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Top 10 Schools for J.D./M.B.A. Programs: #2 Harvard Law School appeared first on Law Street.

Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Alexis Evans, Hyunjae Ham, Symon Rowlands and Toni Keddell.

Click here to read more coverage on Law Street’s Law School Specialty Rankings 2015.

Click here for information on rankings methodology.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Top 10 Law Schools for Civil Rights Law: #5 Harvard Law School appeared first on Law Street.

Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Alexis Evans, Hyunjae Ham, Symon Rowlands and Toni Keddell.

Click here to read more coverage on Law Street’s Law School Specialty Rankings 2015.

Click here for information on rankings methodology.

Criminal Law

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Top 10 Law Schools for Criminal Law: #1 Harvard Law School appeared first on Law Street.

Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Alexis Evans, Hyunjae Ham, Toni Keddell, and Symon Rowlands.

Click here to read more coverage on Law Street’s Law School Specialty Rankings 2015.

Click here for information on rankings methodology.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Top 10 Law Schools for International Law: #3 Harvard Law School appeared first on Law Street.

About once a week, I head to my local store to pick up some things that I’ll need for the week, including some milk. Milk is always one of those tricky purchases, because you have such a short amount of time to use all of it before it expires. Thats why, whenever I go to buy milk, the first thing I do is look at the “sell by” date printed on the carton. But if I were buying milk in Montana, this is something that I would not need to worry about. That’s because in Montana, there is a law stating that milk cannot be sold or donated 12 days after pasteurization. This unusually strict law has forced grocers across Montana to dump thousands of gallons of what most would consider perfectly good milk each week. It’s for this reason that a documentary film crew from Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic recently travelled to Missoula, Montana to get the inside scoop on the state’s milk law.

Montana has by far the stricted law in the United States governing the “sell by” date of milk, and is only one of two states to even have a law that has a requirement for the number of days that milk can sit on a retailer’s shelf. That other state is Pennsylvania, where milk is allowed to sit on shelves for 17 days. Other states either just require that a date is printed without actually specifying any guidelines for that date, or, do not have a law at all.

Harvard Food and Law Policy Clinic director Emily Broad Leib stated that “this has been part of a long-running interest of ours that’s around how we’re wasting so much of the food we produce in the U.S. We’re looking at how these laws–like the law we’re looking at in Montana–are the cause of that waste.” One of goals of the documentary crew to use this case to illustrate the issue of food waste and how food expiration and “sell by” dates contribute to that problem.

Emily Deddensm, a law student working on the documentary, explained that they “went through a bunch of big ideas throughout the semester and finally settled on this law in Montana, which requires milk to be thrown out 12 days after pasteurization” because they “just thought this is good because it’s such an extreme example of the bigger problem.” To them, this was a perfect example of food being thrown out and wasted far before it needs to be.

This Montana law was established in 1980 by the Montana Livestock Board, and despite people’s countless attempts to change it, has remained firmly in place since then. Since studies show that the milk is actually just as fresh after 28 days, the documentary team set out to try and figure out what consumers actually think that arbitrary “sell by” date means.

According to Broad Lieb:

This law makes no sense. It’s really bad for consumers. But even though Montana is the strictest on milk, other states are strict on other things. Again, it’s not just milk. With all of these foods, it’s a quality date. It’s when the manufacturer thinks you get the peak quality on that food. And yet, 90 percent of consumers think it’s about safety, and they throw perfectly good food away.

While being interviewed, Missoula grocer Jim Edwards explained that dairies are the ones that do not want this rule to change. That’s because it means that grocers like him have to buy more milk to fill up their shelves. In addition, it keeps milk prices higher in Montana than in surrounding states.

He also explained that this law makes no sense when actually considering how long it takes a gallon of milk to go bad. According to Edwards:

Little cartons of milk, they go bad quick. But they’re dated for 30 days or something like that. But the gallons never go bad. Half gallons go bad before gallons because anything in a bigger container will last longer. It’s just like wine. A great big huge bottle of wine will age better than a small bottle of wine.

Yet it is the larger gallons that have the sooner expiration dates while the smaller, half gallons have later dates.

According to the documentary crew, most people are unaware that they are throwing away perfectly good milk. Broad Lieb explained that “most people think that if they eat that food after the date, they are going to get sick.” From personal experience, I can say that this is something that I have thought–and have never chanced. I’ve always thrown away food or milk that has reached the date printed on the container.

This is why another goal of the documentary is to raise consumer awareness about the actual meanings of expiration and “sell by” dates. So far, they are already doing a decent job just by sharing information about the documentary. Next time I’ll think twice about throwing away my “spoiled” milk.

Brittany Alzfan

Brittany Alzfan is a student at the George Washington University majoring in Criminal Justice. She was a member of Law Street’s founding Law School Rankings team during the summer of 2014. Contact Brittany at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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