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Lawyers and legal professionals the world over are worried about their health and their job security thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, so it’s time for a little levity with a new set of law school rankings.
From the Princeton Review law school rankings to the U.S. News law school rankings to the Above the Law law school rankings, there are many law school rankings to gaze upon (with some of them more reliable than others) — but have you seen a ranking of the best law schools in the world? Here’s your chance.
Before we get to the World Law School Rankings, let’s discuss the methodology used by the Quacquarelli Symonds team at Top Universities (you can explore more in-depth explanations here if you’re interested):
Each of the subject rankings is compiled using four sources. The first two of these are QS’s global surveys of academics and employers, which are used to assess institutions’ international reputation in each subject. The second two indicators assess research impact, based on research citations per paper and h-index in the relevant subject. These are sourced from Elsevier’s Scopus database, the world’s most comprehensive research citations database.
These four components are combined to produce the results for each of the subject rankings, with weightings adapted for each discipline.
We know you want to see if any American law schools cracked the list, so we won’t make you wait anymore. Here they are, the top 10 best law schools in the world:
1. Harvard University
2. University of Oxford
3. University of Cambridge
4. Yale University
5. Stanford University
6. London School of Economics and Political Science
7. UC Berkeley
8. Columbia University
9. New York University
10. University of Melbourne
USA! USA! USA! More than half of the world’s top 10 law schools are in America! Be sure to grab your ivy and roll around in it, because half of those American law schools are in the Ivy League. Congratulations go out to Harvard for once again coming out on top of both Yale and Stanford in this global law school ranking. Harvard is officially the most elite law school on the planet.
Farther down the list, but still within the top 25 law schools in the world, you’ll see Chicago (#11) and Georgetown (#18). Going deeper, but still within the top 50 law schools in the world, you’ll find UCLA (knocking on the T14’s door at #15 in U.S. News rankings), Michigan (#29), Penn (#31), Duke (#32), Cornell (#41), and Northwestern (#46). But… where’s UVA? Every other U.S. News T14 school has already been listed.
For the second year in a row, UVA is nowhere to be found in the world’s top 50 law schools. Sadly, Quacquarelli Symonds didn’t even bother to show UVA’s rank — all we know is that it fell somewhere between 51 and 100. Sure, it’s great to be ranked so highly on a world scale, but it must be really disappointing to be the only T14 school left out of the world’s top 50. Better luck next year!
What do you think about these worldly law school rankings? Feel free to congratulate or condemn your alma mater — but be careful, the world is watching.
QS World University Rankings by Subject 2020 – Law [Top Universities]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.