No offense, but is there any other time of the year when people actually pay attention to US News? The annual law school rankings don't officially come out until tomorrow, but they're popping up all over the Web. (Here's the full list). Local angle: UCLA ties for #15, USC all alone at #18 and Pepperdine ties for #55. *Loyola ties for #71. Here's the top 5:

1. Yale
2. Harvard
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. NYU

Glad that's settled. Ashby Jones at the WSJ's Law Blog argues that for all the hype, the list has grown even more important over the years.

Sure, like any ranking, they're imperfect; anyone with a college statistics course under his or her belt can quibble at length with the methodology. And some have quite impressively detailed the length to which schools game the system. Still, much to the chagrin of law school deans and faculties, the rankings matter -- to students and hiring partners and judges and others -- and in our opinion they'll continue to matter so long as 1) a more visible and reliable ranking fails to emerge and 2) the practice of law remains a profession that trades so heavily on status, prestige and pedigree.