Cambridge bagged top spot — again
The University of Dundee has ranked higher than Russell Group heavyweights coming in third and beating the London School of Economics (LSE), which came in fourth, University College London (sixth) and Durham University (eighth) in this year’s law faculty power list.
Unsurprisingly, there’s little change to the very top end of the list. The University of Cambridge came first, making it the best law faculty in the United Kingdom for the fifth consecutive year, closely followed by the University of Oxford at number two. Dundee’s ascent to bronze place sent Queen Mary — which ranked third in the 2018 list — tumbling down the ranks to a humble 17th.
Compiled by The Guardian, the annual list assesses UK law degrees on a number of key criteria, some from students themselves (using the National Student Survey) including student satisfaction, the quality of teaching and student-to-staff ratios as well as specific metrics such as law graduates’ careers prospects. Law schools are then given a score out of 100 and ranked accordingly.
And there’s definitely something going on in Scotland right now: alongside Dundee climbing three places, Abertay University, also based in Dundee, made a shock first appearance at number seven on the list. The University of Glasgow rocketed eighteen places up the league to come in at ninth.
Northern major players, the University of York, came in fifth, and Leeds dropped a few points but still secured tenth place, rounding off this year’s top ten.
Further down the law school pecking order, the University of East Anglia slipped out of the top ten and finished 18th this year while London South Bank University — last year’s big riser — dropped twelve places down to 25th.
The newspaper has added a new index this year which is the continuation score, measuring how many first-year students carry on into their second year. Other university league tables include those compiled by The Complete University Guide and one by The Times.
Legal Cheek will be in Glasgow next week for our first ever student commercial awareness event North of the border. Apply to attend here.
Top 20 Law Faculties 2019:
| Ranking | Law school | Overall Guardian score (out of 100) |
| 1 | Cambridge | 100 |
| 2 | Oxford | 89.5 |
| 3 | Dundee | 88.9 |
| 4 | London School of Economics | 83.5 |
| 5 | York | 83.1 |
| 6 | UCL | 82.7 |
| 7 | Abertay Dundee | 82.4 |
| 8 | Durham | 79.7 |
| 9 | Glasgow | 78.9 |
| 10 | Leeds | 78.5 |
| 11 | Bristol | 76.3 |
| 12 | King’s College London | 76 |
| 13 | Kent | 75.3 |
| 14 | Southampton Solent | 75.1 |
| 15 | Aberdeen | 74.6 |
| 16 | Nottingham | 74.1 |
| 17 | Queen Mary | 72.4 |
| 18 | UEA | 72.3 |
| 19 | Cumbria | 71.4 |
| 20 | Buckingham | 71.3 |
The full rankings can be found here.