School may be out for the summer, but we’ve got just what every lawyer and law student wants to see: a ranking of the best law schools in the world.
Move over U.S. News, because we’re about to go global.
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 keep you waiting. Here are the top 10 best law schools in the world:
- Harvard University
- University of Oxford
- University of Cambridge
- Yale University
- Stanford University
- New York University
- London School of Economics and Political Science
- Columbia University
- UC Berkeley
- University of Chicago
USA! USA! USA! More than half of the world’s top 10 law schools are in America! In fact, half of the T14 is represented here. It should be noted that while Harvard dropped out of the top 3 in the most recent U.S. News law school ranking, it continues to beat Yale and Stanford in this worldwide 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 Georgetown (tied at #21) and UCLA (#25). Going deeper, but still within the top 50 law schools in the world, you’ll find Penn (#27), Duke (#28), Michigan (#35), Cornell (#36), and UVA (#50).
Also representing for America in the top 100 law schools in the world are Northwestern at #54, GW tied at #76, and UT-Austin tied at #78. It’s great that so many U.S. law schools are ranked so highly on a global scale.
What do you think about these worldly law school rankings? Congratulate or condemn your alma mater — but be careful, the world is watching.
QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022 – Law & Legal Studies [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.
