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Law Schools

Law Schools

Note: While these sites may contain information of value to you, the Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library (SSHEL) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign do not endorse the sites or the information they contain. For more information and current research on rankings, we encourage you to read some of the articles listed in our College Rankings Bibliography and to see our Caution and Controversy page. For questions or comments, please contact Nancy O’Brien.

Internet Legal Resource Guide’s Law School Rankings
Methodology: Each of the sites below lists its data source on its opening page. The rankings are based on a single factor and the methodology is implicit in the ranking.
The Internet Legal Resource Guide, a compendium of law-related online sites, offers the following “single factor” rankings of law schools. Each list uses raw data released by the schools for the current year. (Note: while viewing these charts, you can re-sort the list by any of the available columns simply by clicking that column’s header.)

LLM Guide: Master of Laws Programs Worldwide
Methodology: This site uses popularity rankings based on the number of hits/views to a law school program’s website from the LLM Guide website.
LLM Guide offers a ranking on law school programs called “Most Popular Programs on LLM Guide.” This site also contains a directory of other websites containing national and international law school programs rankings.

The Princeton Review’s Best Law Schools
Methodology: An explanation for their methodology can be found on Methodology with more information found on FAQ: The Best Law Schools.
This site does not offer one overall “best” law school, but rather offers 11 different ranking lists from Toughest To Get Into to Most Chosen by Older Students. The site reports that “None of these lists purports to rank the schools in terms of overall quality,” but are meant to identify important attributes for prospective students. Note: Registration is required to access these rankings, but it is free.

The Study of Philosophy in Law Schools and Top Law Schools for Philosophy
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its rankings in the body of its text.
Intended for students interested in the philosophical study of law, this site offers rankings of law schools in topics of interest to students of philosophy. The top schools are given a brief but informative description of strengths. Also linked are lists of specialty rankings for law schools including legal philosophy, tax law, health law, and many others. This site is a part of the Philosophical Gourmet Report which ranks graduate programs in philosophy. The author of this site, Brian Leiter, is a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Top Law Schools: Rankings
Methodology: This site consolidates the most recent rankings from five law school rankings.
Top Law Schools consolidates five law school rankings: U.S. News & World Report, Gourman Report, Educational Quality Rankings, Insider’s Guide to Law Schools and Justice Brennan. It is a useful site to compare the variety of ranking outcomes for that particular program, but it does not provide the methodology for the separate rankings.

U.S. News and World Report Graduate School Rankings – Law
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its methodology on a page titled Methodology: Law School Rankings.
This site contains the most recent rankings of law schools and several disciplines within law such as trial advocacy and intellectual property, as well as the methodology used to evaluate each. This site also contains links to information about admission to law school and the LSAT and related articles.