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Will just any LLM do?
Be sure to separate out the benefits of doing an LLM at just any school from those available if you attend a top school.
In judging whether a given school?s programme will get you where you want to go, be sure to look at where its graduates end up. But do not assume that, simply because one graduate ended up at a top firm, you will too.
Consider the results achieved by those most like you in terms of the quality (and subject matter) of their first degree and their prior work experience ? and how well they did in the LLM programme.
How important are rankings when it comes to choosing a law school?
Choosing a law school for your LLM degree can be a daunting process. Which one will offer you the highest quality teaching, courses most relevant to your future, a careers service best able to help you polish your pitch to employers and so on?
Although detailed information about these and other important considerations will certainly be helpful to your decision, you may also want to know how different schools are ranked.
After all, a school?s ranking both reflects how a school is viewed and, in turn, helps determine the quality of applicants it attracts.
The ranking of law schools, however, is by no means a science. The organisations and individuals undertaking these rankings are confronted by daunting methodological problems.
From an immense amount of information, a few factors must necessarily be singled out and calculated ? all in order to provide ?scores? that allow readers to differentiate among schools. Even in the simplest of universes, this would be difficult.
It is not obvious how the two schools should be compared, even when two relatively simple quantitative measures are employed.
The problem is made infinitely more complicated when numerous other factors are considered, especially because many of these are inherently subjective rather than easily and objectively quantifiable.
Rankings in Australia, the UK and the US
Rankings in Australia
Rankings in the UK
Rankings in the US
Some warnings
Rankings are useful as a very rough guide to the reputation and quality of different law schools. Most people take them too seriously, however, when considering where to apply. The schools differ enough in their goals, programmes and atmospheres that a person who will be well served by one may be poorly served by another. These concerns give rise to some guidelines for using rankings:
1. Where there are multiple rankings available, look at as many as possible and consider the consensus rather than any one ranking. Consider even this consensus view as no better than a very rough approximation of the appropriate tier for a school.
2. Remember that the ranking you are consulting is probably for the undergraduate rather than the postgraduate programme.
3. Because you should be looking for the best programme to meet your specific subject and other needs, with an atmosphere in which you will thrive, the rankings have only a modest part to play in helping you to find this programme.
4. More important than the rankings will be the research you do concerning details of specific programmes.
Creating your own rankings
The rankings discussed above use various means to arrive at their results. They could use any number of other approaches ? and so can you. Nothing stops you from ranking schools on the basis of what most interests you.
No ranking can (or should) substitute for your own assessment of what you most need.
The biggest problems with LLM rankings
No serious attempts have yet been made to compare law schools in different countries, let alone in different regions of the world. American rankings look only at American schools; similarly, Australian rankings include only Australian schools. Arguably more of a problem is that no serious rankings of LLM programmes (as opposed to first-degree programmes) exist. Even in the rankings-crazy US market, the various rankings are for JD programmes only.
Further information
Australia
UK
US
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