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A ranking of a university is not a ranking of its law school

The best-known tables publish an overall institutional position and a separate subject position for law. The two are built differently and often disagree, and it is the overall position that gets repeated in conversation. An overall position blends a university’s performance across every subject it teaches, which means it is substantially a statement about subjects you will never study.

A league table position is a composite by construction: several indicators, scaled and added together with weights the publisher chose. Change the weights and the order changes. That is not a scandal; it is what a composite is. It does mean a one-place difference between two universities is an artefact of an editorial decision, not a finding about teaching.

The four you will be shown, and what we could establish about each

The Complete University Guide, the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, the Guardian University Guide and QS each publish a law table. We set out to read all four publishers’ terms and methodologies. We could read one.

The Complete University Guide
Terms read in full on 12 October 2026. They permit viewing, printing and downloading for personal, non-commercial use only, prohibit copying, republishing or commercially exploiting the content, and require prior written consent for commercial use. The operator is IDP Connect Limited. There is no argument that a paid subscription product sits inside personal non-commercial use, so we do not reproduce any part of its table.
The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide
We could not read the terms. The content is behind a paywall and the site was not reachable from our systems. We therefore treat it as all rights reserved and assume reproduction needs a syndication licence.
The Guardian University Guide
We could not read the terms. Treated as all rights reserved, with reproduction assumed to run through Guardian News and Media’s own licensing route.
QS
We could not read the terms: one page refused our request and another returned almost no readable text. Treated as all rights reserved.

So the honest statement about three of the four is that we do not know what their terms say, and we have acted as though they say no. We are not going to describe a methodology we could not read, and you should treat any site that summarises all four in a tidy comparison box with the same suspicion.

Their most valuable column comes from data anyone can have

The tables carry a graduate prospects or outcomes measure. The Graduate Outcomes survey site states that its results are used by league tables, by Prospects and by The Complete University Guide. The same survey is the source of the Office for Students’ progression indicator — and the Office for Students publishes that indicator for law specifically, at each English provider, against an intake-adjusted benchmark, with confidence intervals, under the Open Government Licence.

That is finer than the commercial version in three ways at once: it is law-specific rather than whole-institution, it is adjusted for who the provider admitted, and it comes with an honest measure of uncertainty. It is also free. The column everyone pays attention to is the column nobody needs to buy.

What none of the four measures

  • Value added. A provider that admits students with the highest grades will record the best outcomes almost regardless of what it does with them. The regulator publishes a benchmark that adjusts for intake. None of the four ranks on the difference from it, so far as we can establish.
  • Uncertainty. Published positions are whole numbers in a strict order. The underlying indicators have confidence intervals, and for many pairs of providers the honest answer is that there is no significant difference.
  • Vintage. Graduate earnings figures describe people who graduated years ago. In the current Department for Education release, the five-years-out law figure is for 2017/18 graduates. A composite score folds that in and hides it.
  • Anything about qualifying as a lawyer. No general league table measures SQE performance, pupillage, training contracts or admission. A law degree is a degree; becoming a lawyer is a separate process with its own data and its own bottleneck.

Nobody ranks law schools on legal outcomes, and the reason is money

In the legal careers sector specifically there is no law school ranking at all. We looked for one across the sites students are actually sent to, and found directories and route explainers instead. Legal Cheek’s law schools list covers thirteen providers with fees and no scorecards, no ranking and no provider pass rates. LawCareers.Net’s course search covers, on its own description, over a hundred universities and law schools, with study-mode and regional filters, no tuition fees, no outcome data, and results ordered by a relevance label of its own. Chambers Student and the Legal 500 have route explainers. Prospects and the National Careers Service have general course finders.

The reason is on the publishers’ own pages, read on 12 October 2026. The free guidance that recommends an SQE or conversion provider is generally paid for by a provider. Legal Cheek’s SQE hub materials are described as developed with The University of Law, with a toolkit sponsored by BARBRI. AllAboutLaw carries BPP sponsorship in its header and on its flagship content, and its free SQE taster leads to The University of Law’s paid course. LawCareers.Net’s SQE hub is marked as sponsored by The University of Law, and the same publisher sells a courses directory to legal educators as advertising. The Lawyer Portal’s Aspire programme is delivered with BPP Law School. Group GTI, which publishes in this market, states on its own about page that it is funded through employer payments for services and platform access.

None of that is hidden and none of it is improper. It does mean nobody with a free business model in this sector has an incentive to rank the providers who fund it. A subscriber-funded site can rank a law school that an advertiser-funded site cannot, which is the whole argument for charging you instead.

There is no official SQE pass rate by provider

This is the number everyone wants and nobody has. The SRA’s SQE2 report for January 2026 breaks results down by age, parental university attendance, qualifying work experience, highest level of education, degree classification, prior qualification as a lawyer, school type, household earner occupation and first language. It contains no breakdown by university attended and none by training provider. Neither does the SQE1 report.

So any SQE pass rate attached to a named course is self-reported by that provider and unverified. We will not rank SQE providers on outcomes, and we will not print such a figure as if it were official, until the SRA publishes verified provider-level results. If that changes, it will be the first thing on this page.

The one exception in English and Welsh legal education is the Bar. The Bar Standards Board publishes pass rates and progression to pupillage by course provider, conditioned on degree classification. That report, and why we cite it rather than reproduce it, is on the cost page.

What we may lawfully do with somebody else’s table, and what we may not

We may name a ranking, describe it in our own words, criticise it, and quote a single position with a proper acknowledgement and a link. That is the quotation provision in section 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which is limited to no more of the quotation than the purpose requires. One provider’s position inside a sentence of commentary is within it. A column of a hundred and thirty positions is not.

We may not harvest a table, on any schedule. Database right under the 1997 Regulations is infringed by extracting or re-using a substantial part of a database, and the Regulations provide that repeated and systematic extraction of insubstantial parts may itself amount to extraction of a substantial part. A nightly pull of a few rows aggregates into the same thing as taking the lot, and a cached copy counts as an extraction. Nor is there a research exception available to us: the text and data mining provision applies only to research for a non-commercial purpose, and a paid subscription is not that.

We also will not build a rankings aggregator that shows several publishers’ positions side by side. That is the shape most likely to take a substantial part of each source at once, and it is the feature a competitor would most like us to build.

The Assize Careers law provider index

So we built one. It is computed from data that is openly licensed for commercial use, the metrics and the weights are published, and the thing it refuses to do is the thing the tables above all do: it does not put two providers in an order when the published uncertainty says they are indistinguishable. 91 providers are in edition 2026-1, in 7 bands. 68 more are carried with their figures and are not ranked, each with the reason on its row.

Read it as 7 groups, not as 91 places. A band means the providers in it are not statistically distinguishable from the provider that opens the band. Inside a band the rows are in score order so you can find a name, and that order is not a finding. The method, the weights and every caveat are on their own page, and nothing here was computed any other way.

The Assize Careers law provider index, edition 2026-1, built 12 October 2026. England only. Score is 0 to 100 on the default weights, never printed without its 95 per cent interval. Points covered is how many of the 100 default points the score actually stands on, because the publishers suppress figures and we do not fill them in. Earnings are the 2017/18 graduates, observed in tax year 2023/24, rounded to £100 with graduate counts rounded to 5. The offer rate is UCAS’s own for the 2025 cycle, computed by UCAS from unrounded counts; it measures competitiveness, not quality, and it is a cycle-level ratio for everyone who applied, not your chance of an offer.
Provider Law cohort Progression vs benchmark Median earnings, 5 years Law offer rate, 2025 Score (95% interval) Points covered
Band 1: 1 provider, scores 82.4 to 82.4. Opened by The University of Cambridge, whose interval is 78.5 to 86.3 — every provider in this band overlaps it, so the differences inside the band are not statistically significant.
The University of Cambridge 1,020 +5.0 pts of 290 £77,000 from 80 graduates 16.9% 82.4 (78.5 to 86.3) 75
Band 2: 4 providers, scores 65.5 to 73.5. Opened by The London School of Economics and Political Science, whose interval is 69.5 to 77.6 — every provider in this band overlaps it, so the differences inside the band are not statistically significant.
The London School of Economics and Political Science 750 +2.0 pts of 180 £68,800 from 50 graduates 15.9% 73.5 (69.5 to 77.6) 100
University College London 980 +2.6 pts of 150 £62,600 from 50 graduates 14.9% 69.9 (65.7 to 74.1) 100
Oxford University 920 +1.5 pts of 300 £62,900 from 90 graduates 11.1% 68.6 (65.4 to 71.8) 100
King's College London 1,320 +2.2 pts of 170 £59,800 from 60 graduates 25.9% 65.5 (61.6 to 69.5) 100
Band 3: 4 providers, scores 58.6 to 64.7. Opened by University of Durham, whose interval is 62.0 to 67.5 — every provider in this band overlaps it, so the differences inside the band are not statistically significant.
University of Durham 1,450 +0.1 pts of 410 £58,400 from 75 graduates 47.1% 64.7 (62.0 to 67.5) 100
The University of Warwick 1,190 +2.1 pts of 430 £46,500 from 115 graduates 51.7% 62.2 (59.5 to 64.9) 100
Southampton Solent University 240 +6.7 pts of 90 £33,700 from 25 graduates 97.1% 60.8 (54.4 to 67.2) 100
Aston University 870 +4.8 pts of 310 £31,500 from 85 graduates 89.4% 58.6 (55.1 to 62.0) 100
Band 4: 19 providers, scores 53.5 to 58.2. Opened by University of Bristol, whose interval is 55.7 to 60.7 — every provider in this band overlaps it, so the differences inside the band are not statistically significant.
University of Bristol 1,780 +1.5 pts of 520 £51,100 from 165 graduates 54.8% 58.2 (55.7 to 60.7) 100
The University of Surrey 710 +4.0 pts of 280 £39,900 from 85 graduates 92.7% 57.9 (54.3 to 61.5) 100
University of York 1,140 +1.6 pts of 370 £41,700 from 100 graduates 75.7% 57.3 (54.3 to 60.3) 100
The University of Lancaster 1,020 +1.2 pts of 340 £37,000 from 70 graduates 94.2% 56.9 (53.6 to 60.1) 100
The University of Sheffield 1,000 +1.4 pts of 290 £38,800 from 135 graduates 86.4% 56.6 (53.2 to 60.0) 100
The University of Cumbria 330 +2.1 pts of 100 £28,200 from 15 graduates 89.9% 56.5 (49.6 to 63.4) 100
Queen Mary University of London 1,450 +0.2 pts of 220 £43,900 from 60 graduates 58.4% 56.3 (52.7 to 59.9) 100
The University of Nottingham 1,420 +0.2 pts of 470 £48,300 from 120 graduates 82.6% 56.1 (53.4 to 58.9) 100
University of Worcester 270 +6.1 pts of 100 Insufficient data (no row published) 98.0% 56.0 (48.5 to 63.4) 83
University of Sussex 1,260 +2.9 pts of 300 £39,500 from 105 graduates 92.4% 55.8 (52.5 to 59.0) 100
York St John University 460 +2.2 pts of 120 Insufficient data (no row published) 96.4% 54.6 (47.5 to 61.7) 83
Nottingham Trent University 2,600 +2.8 pts of 920 £31,100 from 305 graduates 96.4% 54.3 (52.4 to 56.3) 100
University of Exeter 2,210 +2.6 pts of 600 £45,900 from 150 graduates 94.2% 54.2 (51.8 to 56.6) 100
Kingston University 320 +0.7 pts of 110 £33,700 from 50 graduates 97.6% 54.0 (48.2 to 59.9) 100
The University of Liverpool 2,350 +4.6 pts of 820 £34,400 from 260 graduates 92.1% 53.9 (51.9 to 56.0) 100
University of Southampton 710 +0.5 pts of 280 £40,300 from 105 graduates 83.3% 53.9 (50.3 to 57.5) 100
Edge Hill University 650 +3.3 pts of 220 £30,700 from 50 graduates 95.6% 53.8 (49.6 to 58.0) 100
The University of Leicester 2,010 +0.4 pts of 460 £34,800 from 120 graduates 93.4% 53.6 (50.9 to 56.3) 100
The University of Bradford 400 +4.7 pts of 140 £25,300 from 50 graduates 92.5% 53.5 (48.2 to 58.7) 100
Band 5: 30 providers, scores 47.4 to 52.8. Opened by The University of Birmingham, whose interval is 50.5 to 55.2 — every provider in this band overlaps it, so the differences inside the band are not statistically significant.
The University of Birmingham 2,170 +2.6 pts of 580 £41,400 from 175 graduates 75.9% 52.8 (50.5 to 55.2) 100
The University of Reading 1,410 +2.1 pts of 340 £36,600 from 85 graduates 95.4% 52.5 (49.4 to 55.6) 100
The University of East Anglia 810 -2.6 pts of 300 £38,100 from 100 graduates 89.9% 52.1 (48.6 to 55.6) 100
The University of Manchester 1,470 +4.1 pts of 390 £34,800 from 245 graduates 46.0% 52.1 (49.2 to 55.1) 100
University of Newcastle upon Tyne 920 +2.6 pts of 330 £39,900 from 115 graduates 77.9% 52.0 (48.7 to 55.3) 100
Leeds Trinity University 230 +2.4 pts of 40 Insufficient data (no row published) 88.7% 51.9 (39.2 to 64.6) 75
University of Plymouth 560 +5.8 pts of 210 £28,900 from 75 graduates 97.8% 51.7 (47.5 to 56.0) 100
Bournemouth University 550 +5.2 pts of 220 £37,700 from 30 graduates 94.7% 51.6 (47.2 to 56.1) 100
The University of Kent (de-registered by the Office for Students on 30 September 2026, after merging with Greenwich) 1,860 -1.7 pts of 550 £37,000 from 130 graduates 92.2% 51.6 (49.0 to 54.1) 100
University of the West of England, Bristol 2,020 -0.9 pts of 490 £32,200 from 145 graduates 94.8% 51.2 (48.5 to 53.9) 100
The University of Leeds 1,950 +2.4 pts of 360 £37,300 from 145 graduates 71.1% 51.1 (48.2 to 54.0) 100
University of Portsmouth 930 0.0 pts of 280 £31,100 from 70 graduates 92.9% 50.8 (47.2 to 54.5) 100
University of Sunderland 360 +2.5 pts of 120 £26,000 from 50 graduates 92.3% 50.8 (45.3 to 56.4) 100
The University of Law Limited 3,790 -0.8 pts of 790 £31,800 from 175 graduates 93.2% 50.4 (48.3 to 52.6) 100
Manchester Metropolitan University 1,640 +1.8 pts of 660 £27,800 from 175 graduates 92.1% 50.2 (47.7 to 52.7) 100
Goldsmiths' College 230 -4.4 pts of 30 Insufficient data (no row published) 93.4% 50.1 (35.9 to 64.3) 75
University of Derby 730 0.0 pts of 320 £30,400 from 70 graduates 98.6% 49.9 (46.1 to 53.7) 100
The University of Westminster 1,420 -0.1 pts of 420 £32,200 from 160 graduates 92.0% 49.8 (46.8 to 52.8) 100
University of Northumbria at Newcastle 1,610 +8.3 pts of 90 £34,500 from 175 graduates 96.4% 49.8 (44.3 to 55.2) 100
Liverpool John Moores University 1,350 +3.6 pts of 440 £27,400 from 115 graduates 97.3% 49.4 (46.4 to 52.3) 100
University of Keele 620 +2.8 pts of 280 £31,100 from 75 graduates 96.3% 49.1 (45.4 to 52.9) 100
Leeds Beckett University 1,090 +0.1 pts of 330 £28,200 from 125 graduates 95.4% 48.9 (45.4 to 52.4) 100
De Montfort University 1,110 -1.9 pts of 560 £27,800 from 170 graduates 96.6% 48.7 (46.0 to 51.5) 100
The University of West London 440 -4.3 pts of 130 £25,300 from 45 graduates 89.2% 48.2 (42.9 to 53.6) 100
The University of Essex 1,700 -3.6 pts of 490 £34,400 from 105 graduates 96.6% 48.1 (45.3 to 50.9) 100
City St George's, University of London 1,940 -5.0 pts of 460 £34,400 from 140 graduates 87.3% 48.0 (45.3 to 50.8) 100
Buckinghamshire New University 200 -4.7 pts of 60 Insufficient data (c) 96.9% 47.7 (36.2 to 59.2) 75
Oxford Brookes University 720 -3.0 pts of 240 £33,700 from 85 graduates 95.8% 47.6 (43.7 to 51.6) 100
The University of Hull 730 -1.0 pts of 260 £30,000 from 70 graduates 94.1% 47.5 (43.5 to 51.6) 100
The University of Salford 950 +3.0 pts of 310 £24,900 from 90 graduates 93.9% 47.4 (43.9 to 51.0) 100
Band 6: 25 providers, scores 40.1 to 47.2. Opened by University of Lincoln, whose interval is 43.9 to 50.4 — every provider in this band overlaps it, so the differences inside the band are not statistically significant.
University of Lincoln 860 -2.2 pts of 420 £29,600 from 75 graduates 96.8% 47.2 (43.9 to 50.4) 100
Liverpool Hope University 240 +6.1 pts of 80 £30,700 from 25 graduates 91.9% 46.9 (39.8 to 53.9) 100
University of Chester 640 -2.6 pts of 320 £26,400 from 75 graduates 92.4% 46.7 (42.8 to 50.5) 100
University of Wolverhampton 730 -1.5 pts of 230 £24,900 from 100 graduates 93.1% 46.2 (42.0 to 50.4) 100
University of Winchester 450 -0.8 pts of 160 £34,400 from 50 graduates 99.3% 45.8 (40.7 to 51.0) 100
The University of Huddersfield 650 -2.1 pts of 270 £26,400 from 85 graduates 97.3% 45.6 (41.7 to 49.5) 100
Brunel University London 800 +4.6 pts of 320 £36,000 from 85 graduates 88.4% 45.5 (42.0 to 48.9) 100
Royal Holloway and Bedford New College 1,260 -0.6 pts of 290 £45,400 from 30 graduates 93.5% 45.3 (41.7 to 48.8) 100
Teesside University 560 -5.2 pts of 220 £28,900 from 65 graduates 94.6% 45.2 (40.6 to 49.7) 100
The University of Buckingham 340 -3.1 pts of 70 £32,900 from 20 graduates 76.0% 44.7 (38.1 to 51.4) 100
University of Gloucestershire 170 +2.3 pts of 70 £26,400 from 25 graduates 98.8% 44.7 (36.9 to 52.5) 96
Anglia Ruskin University 590 -0.1 pts of 170 £33,300 from 95 graduates 93.3% 44.6 (40.3 to 49.0) 100
London and South East University Group (the University of Greenwich, after its merger with the University of Kent on 1 August 2026) 840 -1.2 pts of 190 £31,800 from 50 graduates 96.9% 44.5 (40.1 to 48.8) 100
University of Staffordshire (formerly Staffordshire University) 550 -1.8 pts of 180 £26,400 from 70 graduates 94.3% 44.0 (39.1 to 49.0) 100
Coventry University 1,420 -5.8 pts of 590 £28,900 from 145 graduates 94.2% 43.9 (41.1 to 46.6) 100
London South Bank University 820 -9.0 pts of 250 £32,900 from 55 graduates 88.9% 43.3 (39.1 to 47.4) 100
University of Hertfordshire 1,070 -2.6 pts of 390 £31,500 from 180 graduates 86.5% 43.0 (39.8 to 46.2) 100
Sheffield Hallam University 1,260 -1.8 pts of 410 £27,800 from 130 graduates 92.4% 42.7 (39.5 to 45.9) 100
London Metropolitan University 510 -8.7 pts of 150 £33,300 from 45 graduates 88.1% 42.6 (37.3 to 48.0) 100
University of East London 590 -7.6 pts of 170 £31,100 from 70 graduates 92.0% 42.5 (37.6 to 47.4) 100
University of Lancashire (formerly the University of Central Lancashire) 1,020 -4.5 pts of 360 £26,400 from 125 graduates 92.6% 41.8 (38.3 to 45.3) 100
The School of Oriental and African Studies 750 +1.8 pts of 140 £35,500 from 55 graduates 92.4% 41.7 (36.9 to 46.6) 100
St Mary’s University, Twickenham 250 -2.3 pts of 80 £32,500 from 40 graduates 91.4% 41.2 (34.4 to 48.1) 100
Birkbeck College 440 +0.8 pts of 130 £34,400 from 75 graduates 83.1% 40.3 (34.9 to 45.7) 100
Roehampton University 570 -7.2 pts of 110 £27,600 from 15 graduates 92.9% 40.1 (34.2 to 46.0) 100
Band 7: 8 providers, scores 31.8 to 39.6. Opened by Birmingham City University, whose interval is 36.9 to 42.4 — every provider in this band overlaps it, so the differences inside the band are not statistically significant.
Birmingham City University 1,930 -7.2 pts of 580 £26,400 from 140 graduates 95.5% 39.6 (36.9 to 42.4) 100
Canterbury Christ Church University 780 -7.9 pts of 280 £35,100 from 115 graduates 95.2% 39.5 (35.5 to 43.5) 100
University of Bedfordshire 270 -0.3 pts of 80 £30,400 from 30 graduates 95.8% 38.3 (31.3 to 45.4) 100
Middlesex University 560 -9.8 pts of 160 £29,300 from 70 graduates 93.0% 37.9 (32.8 to 43.0) 100
University of Brighton 450 -3.0 pts of 160 £35,500 from 35 graduates 95.2% 37.6 (32.6 to 42.6) 100
The University of Northampton 530 -1.8 pts of 200 £29,600 from 65 graduates 90.6% 36.2 (31.6 to 40.9) 100
University of Greater Manchester (formerly the University of Bolton) 180 +2.4 pts of 50 £23,400 from 20 graduates 95.0% 35.8 (27.1 to 44.5) 100
Bloomsbury Institute Limited 120 -14.7 pts of 90 Insufficient data (c) 81.5% 31.8 (22.2 to 41.3) 83

Median earnings five years after graduation, tax year 2023/24 — these are the 2017/18 graduates. A 2026 applicant is being shown the fate of people who started university in 2014, and the number of graduates actually behind each figure is printed beside it, because at five years out it covers about three quarters of a provider’s law cohort and much less than that at some selective providers.

Every cell that reads insufficient data is a figure the publisher withheld, with the publisher’s own code printed beside it and the code’s meaning on hover. Nothing in that column has been estimated, modelled or interpolated, and no suppressed value has been reconstructed from its neighbours. Progression means being in managerial or professional employment, or in further study, fifteen months after completing: it is not an earnings measure.

Two honest limits on the intervals above. They are understated, because the earnings and offer rate families carry no published standard error at all and so contribute no uncertainty to the composite — the interval is a floor on the uncertainty, not a measurement of it. And a provider whose points covered is below 100 is being scored on the weight it has: the figure says how much of the method is actually behind its score.

68 providers are carried but not ranked. 49 of them have no law row in the regulator’s outcome file at all, which is what being outside the English register looks like: Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish law schools appear on earnings or admissions only, and no Northern Ireland provider appears in the earnings release at all. The rest miss the inclusion threshold of 100 law entrants, or have fewer than 3 of the 4 scored families published, or have less than 60 of the 100 points published. All of those rules, and the reasoning, are published.

This index is Assize Careers’ own work. It is not official and is not endorsed by the Office for Students, the Department for Education, UCAS or any university. It covers England only, because the regulator’s outcome and student-experience files cover English-registered providers only; Scottish and Welsh providers are carried on earnings and admissions, and Northern Irish providers on admissions alone, because the earnings release contains no Northern Ireland provider at all.

Assize Careers is not a regulator, professional body, university, law school or official careers service, and it is not part of or endorsed by one. Nothing on this site is legal advice.

Information from the Office for Students is acknowledged as the source. The Office for Students does not endorse Assize Careers or this analysis. Source: UCAS, licensed under CC BY 4.0.