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#The Best Law Schools In The World (2015)

It s a good thing lawyers love law school rankings, because there are tons of them. Every year, it seems like there s a whole new crop of law school rankings to fight about with your friends. Aren t you getting tired of them? No, of course not. Lawyers love rankings more than they love money (okay, maybe that s taking it a step too far).

You ve seen the Princeton Review law school rankings (and like us, you probably wondered why the hell so much emphasis was put on student feedback over actual data). You ve seen the U.S. News law school rankings (and you watched your deans play the blame game lest they be fired). You ve seen the ATL law school rankings (and you cheered for realistic, employment-based metrics; don t worry, the 2015 edition will be released very, very soon). You ve even seen the Cooley law school rankings (and you re hoping and praying that the school hasn t gained a sense of shame and will put out another edition because it ll surely be a LOLable work of disingenuous art).

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 ):

Three extensive datasets are used in order to rank universities’ performance in specific academic disciplines. These are QS’s major global surveys of academics and employers, and research citations data from Scopus .

These three components, reflecting academic reputation, employer reputation and research impact, are combined to produce the results in each subject, with weightings adapted by 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

2. Cambridge

3. Oxford

4. Yale

5. NYU

6. Stanford

7. London School of Economics and Political Science

8. Melbourne

9. UC Berkeley

10. Columbia

USA! USA! USA! More than half of the world s top 10 legal academies 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 finally coming out on top of both Yale and Stanford in a law school ranking. You already thought you were elite, but now the entire world has to give you a pat on the back.

Farther down the list, but still within the top 25 law schools in the world, you ll see Chicago (#12) and Georgetown (#24). Going deeper into the list, but still within the top 50 law schools in the world, you ll find Michigan (#28), Penn (#29), Cornell (#31), UCLA (#32), Duke (#39), and UVA (#47). But where s Northwestern? Every other U.S. News T14 school has already been listed.

Maybe if everyone at Northwestern stopped partying so much then the school wouldn t have been ranked outside of the top 50 law schools in the world. Quacquarelli Symonds didn t even bother to show Northwestern s rank all we know is that it fell somewhere between 51 and 100. Ouch, how does it feel to have landed in the rank not published section of the rankings? 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.

What do you think about these new law school rankings? Feel free to congratulate or condemn your alma mater in the comments but be careful, because now the entire world is watching.