Warwick and Edinburgh leapfrogged by London South Bank in shock new Guardian law degree rankings

Dark days for regional Russell Group-ers

London South Bank University has ranked higher than Nottingham and Warwick in a new eyebrow-raising law faculty power list.

Compiled by The Guardian newspaper, the annual league table assesses law schools on a number of key criteria including quality of teaching, level of feedback, student to staff ratio and percentage of law grads with a career after six months. The newspaper then generates a score out of 100 and ranks the law schools accordingly.

The new 2018 results show that London South Bank University — in Leicester City F.C. fashion — has rocketed up the league table. Ranked a humble 58th on the 2017 list, the uni has climbed a whopping 45 places to tie 13th with Queen’s University, Belfast. This puts the former polytechnic ahead of City law firm recruitment favourites such as the University of Nottingham (15th) and the University of Warwick (24th).

It was, however, business as usual at the very top of the table. For the fourth consecutive year, the University of Cambridge has been named the top law faculty in the United Kingdom. With the University of Oxford taking second, Queen Mary University of London — rising two places on its 2017 ranking — finished third.

Further down the law school pecking order, Durham University scooped fourth, narrowly beating the London School of Economics (fifth) and the University of Dundee (sixth). Elsewhere, the University of East Anglia bagged seventh and the University of Leeds — rising an impressive 14 places on last year’s result — landed eighth. Rounding off the top ten were the University of York and University College London in ninth and tenth place.

But spare a thought for the regional Russell Group-ers. Cardiff University (53rd) and the University of Manchester (56th) were only able to secure mid-table finishes, while the University of Southampton and the University of Liverpool ranked a disappointing 60th and 66th place respectively.

2018 Top 20 Law Faculties:

The full rankings can be found here.

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