The Best Law Schools In The World (2021)

Is your law school one of the best in the world? Find out here.

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COVID got you down? Not to worry, because rankings season continues, and yet another list is here to bring a little levity to lives of lawyers and law students.

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. Columbia University
8. New York University
9. UC Berkeley
10. National University of Singapore

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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 (tied at #11) and Georgetown (#19). Going deeper, but still within the top 50 law schools in the world, you’ll find UCLA (#26), Michigan (#30), Penn (#31), Duke (#32), Cornell (#38), UVA (#46), and Northwestern (#49).

Also representing for America in the top 100 law schools in the world are GW at #75 and BU at #98. 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? Feel free to congratulate or condemn your alma mater — but be careful, the world is watching.

QS World University Rankings by Subject 2021 – Law [Top Universities]

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Staci ZaretskyStaci 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.