photo by: Ashley Golledge

This Journal-World file photo from 2020 shows Green Hall, 1535 W. 15th St., home to the University of Kansas School of Law.

KU’s law school is a top 40 institution in the country by one metric highlighted in a recently released study.

The University of Kansas School of Law ranked No. 40 among all public and private law schools in the category of “scholarly impact,” the university announced Monday. A team of Minnesota researchers regularly ranks law schools based on the number of times faculty members at the schools have been cited in law journals over the last five years.

In addition to being ranked 40th overall, KU ranked No. 16 among public law schools, and was only one of two law schools from the Big 12 Conference that was included in the study, which ranks only the top-third law schools.

The ranking comes out every three years, and KU law has risen in the rankings each of the last three times. In 2015, the school ranked No. 64, and in 2018 it ranked No. 48.

Yale and the University of Chicago took the top two spots, while the University of California-Berkeley was the top ranked public institution, ranked No. 6 overall. The University of Texas was the only other Big 12 school ranked, coming in at No. 18 overall.