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The best law schools for law and economics start where the field started. Chicago's institute carries Ronald Coase's name, and the Coase-Sandor Institute remains the discipline's center of gravity. Twenty of the 31 schools here run a verified named center or program; eleven do not. Ranked table below.
Ranked by the depth and independence of the named entity. We list only schools where we could verify a real center, institute or degree program, so absence means unverified rather than weak.
#SchoolNamed center or programFirms 101+Fed clerkships1UChicagoCoase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics63.9%22.7%2YaleJohn M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Public Policy37.4%23.2%3HarvardJohn M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business58.8%16.6%4StanfordJohn M. Olin Program in Law and Economics48.9%19.5%5PennInstitute for Law and Economics71.4%7.9%6UVAJohn M. Olin Program in Law and Economics69.2%10.7%7NYUCenter for Law, Economics and Organization67.4%5.5%8ColumbiaCenter for Law and Economic Studies78.4%4.1%9NorthwesternCenter on Law, Business, and Economics71.6%5.7%10VanderbiltPhD Program in Law and Economics61.1%10.8%11DukeCenter for Law, Economics, and Public Policy74.8%11.7%12MichiganProgram in Law and Economics59.5%9.9%13CornellLaw and Economics Program65.5%5.6%14BerkeleyProgram in Law and Economics62.2%6.4%15UCLACenter for Law and Economics60.8%3.9%16Notre DameProgram on Law and Economics40.9%17.1%17MinnesotaInstitute for Law and Economics28.8%3.2%18USCCenter for Law and Social Science67.8%3.5%19GWCenter for Law, Economics and Finance32.5%2.6%20WashUCenter for Empirical Research in the Law53.5%11.7%
Centers verified from each school's own pages, July 26, 2026. Outcome columns from each school's 2025 ABA 509 report and class of 2025 ABA Employment Summary, verified July 26, 2026.
UChicago, and the case is historical rather than promotional. The field's intellectual lineage runs through Aaron Director and Ronald Coase at Chicago, and the school's Coase-Sandor Institute is named for the scholar whose work defined the discipline (https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/chicago-and-law-and-economics-history).
Yale, Harvard, Stanford, UVA and Penn all run substantial programs, and four of them carry the John M. Olin name, which reflects the foundation that funded the field's institutional expansion across elite law schools.
Vanderbilt deserves specific mention for a structural reason: it runs a PhD program in law and economics, which is a different order of commitment from a workshop series or a research center.
At Chicago, through the work of Aaron Director and then Ronald Coase, whose analysis of transaction costs and social cost reframed how legal rules are evaluated. Coase joined the Chicago faculty and edited the Journal of Law and Economics, which institutionalized the field.
The approach spread through the 1970s and 1980s to Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Virginia, in several cases with Olin Foundation funding that created the named centers still operating today.
The practical consequence for an applicant is that this is one of the few specialties where the historical center and the current center are the same place.
Less a curriculum than a method applied across courses. It shows up in antitrust, corporate, contracts, torts, regulation and increasingly in constitutional and criminal law, as a way of asking what rule produces what incentive.
The concrete markers to look for when comparing schools: a workshop series that brings in outside scholars, faculty who publish in the field, a research center with its own funding, and a joint degree or PhD track if you want to go deep.
Because this is a scholarly method as much as a practice area, it correlates strongly with academic placement. Compare this table against our law professor table and the overlap is substantial.
Three profiles. Anyone considering legal academia, since law and economics remains one of the most productive routes into entry-level hiring. Anyone aiming at antitrust or regulatory practice, where the analytical vocabulary is the working language.
And anyone with an economics or quantitative background who wants that training to keep paying. The overlap between this table and the schools with the strongest federal clerkship rates is not accidental, since both reward the same analytical writing.
Everyone else should treat this as a tiebreaker. A named center does not change your employment outcome, and the outcome columns in the table above vary far more than the center quality does.
A workshop series that brings outside scholars in regularly, which is the clearest sign a center is active rather than nominal. Chicago, Yale, Harvard, Penn and NYU all run established series.
Faculty who publish in the field currently, not historically. A center named twenty years ago outlives the scholars who built it, so check recent faculty output rather than the founding story.
A joint degree or PhD track if you want depth. Vanderbilt's PhD in law and economics is the deepest structural commitment in this set, and joint JD-PhD arrangements exist at several others.
And a course catalogue that actually offers the seminars. The gap between a center's website and the courses available in a given year is larger than applicants expect, and it is checkable before you enroll.
Antitrust and competition work, where economic analysis is the working language of the field and expert economists are on every significant matter.
Regulatory practice across agencies, where cost-benefit analysis is the statutory framework rather than an academic preference. Financial regulation, environmental regulation and telecommunications all run on it.
Corporate and transactional work at the sophisticated end, where incentive analysis drives deal structure. And increasingly in litigation, where damages models decide outcomes.
For anyone with an economics or quantitative undergraduate background, this is the specialty where that training keeps paying rather than becoming a résumé line.
Every number in the table comes from a primary disclosure: each school's 2025 ABA Standard 509 Information Report for admissions, cost and aid, and its class of 2025 ABA Employment Summary for outcomes. Both are filed annually and both are free to read.
We did not use rankings, surveys or reputation. Where a figure required arithmetic, such as a percentage or a net cost, we state that it is our arithmetic and give the inputs so you can check it.
Where we could not verify something, the table says so rather than filling the gap with an estimate. That is why some rows read not published or not verified instead of carrying a number that would look more complete and mean less.
It cannot tell you your outcome. Every figure here describes a class of several hundred people, and your position inside that distribution is set by first-year grades that have not happened yet.
It cannot price your offer, because aid depends on where your numbers sit against each school's medians rather than on the median award. Half of every school's grant recipients got less than the figure shown.
And it cannot capture fit, culture, or whether you will do your best work in that building for three years. Those are discoverable only by visiting and asking current students specific questions, which is worth more than any table on this site.
Look at the events calendar rather than the mission statement. An active center runs a workshop series with outside speakers several times a semester; a nominal one has a page and a director.
Check recent faculty publications in the field, since centers outlive the scholars who built them and a name from twenty years ago proves nothing about today.
And check the course catalogue for the current year. The gap between what a center advertises and what is actually taught is larger than applicants expect and is checkable in advance.
UChicago, whose Coase-Sandor Institute is named for Ronald Coase and sits where the field originated. Yale, Harvard, Stanford, UVA and Penn all run substantial named centers, four of them carrying the John M. Olin name.
At the University of Chicago, through Aaron Director and Ronald Coase, whose work on transaction costs and social cost reframed how legal rules are analyzed. The field spread to Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Virginia through the 1970s and 1980s.
Not directly. It matters for academic placement, for antitrust and regulatory practice where the analytical vocabulary is standard, and for anyone with a quantitative background. Employment outcomes vary far more by school than by center.
Vanderbilt runs a dedicated PhD program in law and economics, which is a materially deeper commitment than a research center or workshop series.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026