Hello,

So I have made my decision about trying to obtain an LLM from UK (In Intellectual property). However, I have no idea where to look for the official ranking of the law schools.

I checked out the guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2017/may/16/university-guide-2018-league-table-for-law).
They have QM in third place, but I have seen hundreds of discussions on this forum where people have stated that QM is a much worse school than Kings College, or LSE. Well here they are beating them!

The other one i checked out was https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings?s=law&y=2016 however this one said Glasgow is quite high ranked. However I saw a forum post about someone uncertain whether to choose Kings College or Glasgow and people laughed at the comparison. That Kings College is clearly a superior university. BUT in the ranking showed above Glasgow clearly beats Kings.

Could someone please point me in the direction of a ranking system which people actually generally agree with.

Could I go to QM and proudly say that its the third best law school in the UK?

While there's no official ranking of LLM programs, the league tables should be good indicators of the school's strengths. The Guardian, Sunday Times, and Complete University Guide are the recognized--but unofficial--rankings in the UK. I think domestic league tables are more representative of the true rankings (as opposed to international rankings) because these are apples-to-apples comparisons. That being said, I think it's important to look at the rankings for the past 5 years instead of just taking a snapshot for a single year. Also note that rankings are never perfect. Even the schools at the top of the rankings put a disclaimer when these rankings are released. Likewise, reputation and student selectivity are some things that are not necessarily reflected in the rankings, especially at the LLM level.

Other than QM students and alumni, I don't think you'll find anyone in the legal field that will say that QM is the third best law school in the UK without batting an eye. I guess it's a bit unfair when you have a league table telling you otherwise, but you'll never win an argument against a prospective employer. After Cambridge and Oxford, people usually consider LSE, KCL or UCL as comprising the next tier. Edinburgh might even have a better reputation than QM.

[Edited by robot6 on Aug 17, 2017]