The world’s best universities for law: Cambridge and Oxford trump UK competition
More Britons would prefer to be lawyers than Hollywood movie stars, but where's the best place to ensure the dream could become a reality?
According to the 2015 World University rankings from QS, Cambridge and Oxford live up to their lofty academic reputation when it comes to law degrees. Cambridge and Oxford are ranked second and third respectively, behind Harvard which is named as the best university in the world for studying law.
QS bases its rankings using major global surveys of academics and employers and the number of research citations given to an average research paper.
LSE is the only other UK entry in the world's top 10 courses for budding lawyers, with a total of eight in the top 50.
| UK rank | World rank | UK University |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | University of Cambridge |
| 2 | 3 | University of Oxford |
| 3 | 7 | London School of Economics |
| 4 | 11 | University College London |
| 5 | 17 | Kings College London |
| 6 | 27 | University of Edinburgh |
| 7 | 35 | University of Nottingham |
| 8 | 45 | Queen Mary University of London |
| 9 | 51-100 | Durham University |
| 10 | 51-100 | University of Manchester |
Read more: The world's best business universities and MBAs
According to a recent YouGov survey, lawyer is the fourth most desired job in the UK – unsurprising when a separate study found that a law graduates had the second highest salaries of all with an average salary of £40,000 in the first year of their career.
Beyond the UK, five of QS' best universities in the world for law are American Ivy League schools, with the University of Melbourne the only other university on the list.
| Rank | University |
|---|---|
| 1 | Harvard University |
| 2 | University of Cambridge |
| 3 | University of Oxford |
| 4 | Yale University |
| 5 | New York University |
| 6 | Stanford University |
| 7 | London School of Economics |
| 8 | The University of Melbourne |
| 9 | University of California, Berkeley |
| 10 | Columbia University |