I guess the long standing controversy over the best law school in the United Kingdom has been settled, at least for the next couple of years.

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 - the only government sponsored rating of research activity in universities across the UK has been published last week.

It is official, at least in terms of research quality, the London School of Economics is the top law university in the UK, beating Cambridge, Oxford and UCL.

With 75 per cent of its research rated either world-class or of international renowned. The LSE wins both on grade point average and on proportion of 4* research.

This assessment is novel as it is based on research profiles rather than average research quality (under the old exercise - RAE 2001). The previous exercise saw a number of universities receiving 5* (the highest award), thus the data was insufficient to compare research quality between universities in the top five or ten.

The following link provides the list of top law universities in the UK in terms of average ranking as determined by data from the RAE 2008.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2008/dec/18/rae-results-2008-law-degree

The List is as follows:

1) LSE
2) UCL
3) Oxford
4) Durham
5) Nottingham
6) Kent
7) Cardiff
8) Queens Belfast
9) Cambridge
10) Edinburgh

It is my understanding that newspaper rankings take into consideration RAE data, however, weight is placed on other factors, e.g. spending, entry points etc.

I would not be surprised if the LSE tops league tables in the coming year. A rise in the number of application to LSE and UCL next year is likely to happen as a result of this assessment, however, Oxbridge applications will unlikely be affected owing to the great prestige attached to Oxbridge awards.

This post is not meant to encourage/discourage potential candidates, nor it is intended to spark heated debate as in many post in this website. It is merely informative..

All the best and Happy Holidays!

The RAE rankings aren't as definitive (or as useful) as you're making them out to be.

The rankings take research initiatives from the relevant faculty (in this case law), and breaks them down into four categories, ranging from "world-class" (4) to "not-so-hot" (1). The rankings then assign a percentage of the total research to each category. For example, here are the breakdowns for two of the schools you've named:

Cambridge: (4): 25% (3): 35 % (2): 35% (1): 5%
Durham: (4): 30% (3): 35% (2): 30% (1): 5%

That gives Cambridge an average (out of 4) of 2.8, while Durham gets a 2.9. So Durham's better, right?

The actual RAE analysis includes an assessment of how many full-time-equivalent academic staff are actually involved, however, but that doesn't make it into the "average" cited above. Cambridge, for example, has the equivalent of 83.27 full-time staff, while Durham has 31.

If you want to try to break that down into individual researchers (which may be pretty artificial, but still), that means Cambridge has 20.8 "world-class" researchers while Durham has 9.3.

Cardiff has 6.2, but still places higher than Cambridge in the rankings.

Durham's ratio of "world-class" researchers to total staff may be higher, but I don't know how that makes it a better school than Cambridge if you're choosing an LLM.

None of the above tells you anything about which professors would actually be teaching you, or even whether the "world-class" researchers would be teaching at all.

I wouldn't use these results to choose a law school, at any rate.

Well said Bender. The 2008 RAE has moved to a different representation of results - compared to the single digit approach taken last time. At least in the last round you could see what percentage of the faculty went in. It is here that sometimes Universities make strategic decisions: is it better to put fewer staff in and thus emphasise the perfermances that are counted, or be more inclusive? As Bender notes, there are different ways of assessing the results: the Times Higher has come up with a different table, for example. If you are looking for a reason behind the different methodologies, it is the level of emphasis given to the 4* category. Overall, it means that the results this time round make comparisons more difficult - which may have been the purpose of choosing this way of recording results. Note also that the RAE panels had been given a pretty strong steer as to how much research should fall into each category (money talks!); does this affect the objectivity of the assessment? I also note that all the percentages are divisible by 5: this suggests to me that some rounding up and rounding down has gone on. This may skew results slightly, particularly for the small law schools. This is of course the last time we'll have the RAE - next time it is the REF - whatever that means!!!

Even for a research student doing a PhD in Law, the research assessment should only be used as a guide to identify relevant research in the field of law they intend to specialise in. In other words, any one of the top 10 or 20 research universities would provide an excellent opportunity for one to further his or her understanding of a specific area of law. Be that as it may, the prospective applicant needs to determine first his or her objective in the study of law: is it to read for a taught Master's or to pursue research? As this web site suggests, most registered users are interested in pursuing an LLM degree. Since an LLM in most law schools is a taught postgraduate degree, the quality of teaching, rather than research quality, ought to be the primordial consideration. In other words, feedback from students and alumni of particular law schools, rather than research assessment surveys, would be a better gauge in determining which law school a prospective applicant would be best suited to attend.

To say that research-based activity has no relevance to a taught study would be too blanket a statement..
One cannot ignore the fact that deeper the research of a faculty, the better they can contribute to a student's knowledge, so kind of one cannot totally ignore the value of research.
But, of course, one cannot base one's assessment either on commercially driven newspapers' rankings or a research based ranking, the working system of which is beyond a lay person's understanding.
Kind of betrays senses as to what to rely upon. But, for sure, rich history, class and legacy are tough to replace and can be the common denomenators.

To say that research-based activity has no relevance to a taught study would be too blanket a statement..
One cannot ignore the fact that deeper the research of a faculty, the better they can contribute to a student's knowledge, so kind of one cannot totally ignore the value of research.
But, of course, one cannot base one's assessment either on commercially driven newspapers' rankings or a research based ranking, the working system of which is beyond a lay person's understanding.
Kind of betrays senses as to what to rely upon. But, for sure, rich history, class and legacy are tough to replace and can be the common denomenators.

To come back to the above stated data relaesed by RAE, they have done an incredible job by applying the law of averages where the sheer strength of volumes is uncomparable. One has to note the fact that there is a wide gap between the amount of research being carried on at various institutions as also the fact that what and how much to submit is at the total discretion of the institutions concerned. So, may be, the ones scoring lower on percentage might actually have been a bit more generous in submitting the papers for review, in comparison to others ranked higher, which might have been more vigilant in chosing what they submit for review.
Essentially, it all boils down to this: You have to take the rankings and thier assumed generalisations with a pinch of salt; and in the present case, i guess, much more salt with a pinch of the rankings!!

Too much salt may be dangerous to one's health. : )

as harmful as this rankings business!!

There shouldn't even be rankings. They foster unhealthy competition among schools, a sort of institutional one- upmanship. Regardless of the rankings, one may have a fairly good idea on the quality of a specific law school in a number of ways: visiting the school either in real time or cyberspace, talking to students and alumni, perusing the law school prospectus, among others. One cannot discount the importance of international reputation, academic prestige, student satisfaction with the programme, career support services and prominent alumni who attended the programme.

The Society of Legal Scholars has a position paper on the subject of RAE presented in 2006.

It may be found on the following site:

http://www.legalscholars.ac.uk/pubdocs/responses/sls-metrics-2006.pdf

Common on this is getting boring.
Too many correct and agreable statements are being made here...
come up with something that can give some fodder for our ever-so-hungry-never-satiated legally trained brains o ruminate over!!!

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But of course, all this ranking system does nothing more than making the hottest selling pancake hotter and instilling higher insecurity into those panick stricken souls that by some unfortunate misfiring of time, place and action came to be assigned a lesser place.
All these criteria like peer review, employers' choice and standing are so misplaced. All this means that the best talents among both students and academia would only aspire to reach the so called zenith marked by the top ranked institutions, whereas the lower ranked or newer institutions would only be content at fighting for their space both in terms of quality of merit and possible sources of institutional/private/public funding.
Plus, even the above-referred article explicitly states in the initial paragraphs that the whole purpose of rankings and ratings is to make these institutions more marketable.
Of course, some institutions of long-standing merit being torchbearers are beyond reproach.
As for the rest, rankings are mere hoardings that keep on altering the material advertised depending upon on complex mix of concrete (and not ambiguous) factors such as season, year, mood of the writer, editor, and indeed the need for sustaining the interest of the common man (and thereby ensuring salebility of the reviewrs' publications).

ALL OF YOU ARE EGO TRIPPIN'.

So will I.

LSE > your Uni.

IN THE END THOUGH....

All that matters is what job you end up in - where you wanted work, not where you were lucky to get into and... for those corporate ppl... the $$ you are making... in such case...

US firms > MC.

Thank you.

God Bless.

And please notice Kent as well. It is an excellent Law School, which is not given much attention for the quality of education it provides. Finally a ranking which resonates its true quality. Not the best reputation, never will be, but on par education wise as Oxbridge and LSE.

One probable reason why LSE scores high in academic research circles would be the £35 Million redevelopment of the Lionel Robbins Building which houses the British Library of Political and Economic Science in 2000, and a further redevelopment in 2007 to expand the Course Collection by 60% while increasing the study space for students and researchers. The improvements in terms of additional volumes of books and study space, as well as the increase in library hours (24 hours during examination time and peak season) and the enhanced automation of loan procedures of books and materials enable the LSE to attract more researchers to undertake their research (often culminating in the writing of books).

Another reason might be the LSE's expertise in Economics and other social sciences. Law being a social science itself, many of the research agendas would be multi-disciplinary, which should allow better cross-over research.

At least with other colleges under the University of London, that might not be the case because their strengths lie in natural, medical and technical sciences rather than social sciences (esp. Imperial, KCL, UCL, QUML.)