Law in QS Subject Rankings 2026: Global Distribution and Top-Tier Indicators

The 2026 QS World University Rankings by Subject place Harvard University at the top of the Law table, with 403 institutions from 61 countries and regions evaluated worldwide. The distribution of ranked law schools is heavily concentrated in a small number of countries, and the score gap between the very top and the rest of the field is substantial.

Global Landscape: Where Law Schools Are Concentrated

The United States leads the country leaderboard with 62 ranked institutions, followed by the United Kingdom with 43. China (Mainland) and Italy each contribute 20 ranked law programs, while Australia follows with 19. Spain (15), Germany (14), Canada (13), France (12), and Brazil (11) round out the top ten countries by representation.

These ten countries alone account for the vast majority of the 403 ranked institutions worldwide. For prospective students, this concentration means that the global law education market is dominated by a relatively small set of nations, with the US and UK holding particular weight in terms of both quantity and prestige.

Country/Region	Ranked Institutions
United States of America	62
United Kingdom	43
China (Mainland)	20
Italy	20
Australia	19
Spain	15
Germany	14
Canada	13
France	12
Brazil	11

Top-Tier Indicators: Scores and Rank Distribution

The score distribution reveals a steep hierarchy. Only 7 institutions achieve an overall score of 90 or above, and just 28 reach the 80–89 band. The 70–79 band is the most crowded, containing 64 institutions. Notably, 101 institutions score between 60 and 69, and an additional 101 fall into the 50–59 band. The fact that no institution scores below 50 suggests a floor to the ranking’s inclusion criteria, but the concentration of scores in the 60s and 70s indicates that most ranked law schools sit in a broad middle tier rather than at the extremes.

When looking at rank bands, the picture is similarly telling. The top 10 ranks are occupied by 10 institutions, and the top 20 by 20. The top 30 contains 30 institutions, while the top 50 includes 51 — meaning the 50th rank is shared or the cutoff falls within a tie. The top 100 encompasses 101 institutions, and the top 150 includes 150. Beyond that, 54 institutions occupy ranks 151–200, 97 sit between 201 and 300, and 102 are ranked 301 or beyond.

The median rank among all 403 institutions is 151.0, meaning half of all ranked law schools fall below the 151st position. This median sits exactly at the boundary between the top 150 and the next band, reinforcing that the ranking’s middle point is far from the top tier.

What the Top 10 Looks Like

The top 10 law programs are all concentrated in the highest score band, with overall scores ranging from 91.7 to 99.8. The gap between the 10th-ranked institution and the 11th is not directly visible from the band data, but the fact that only 7 institutions score 90 or above while 10 occupy the top 10 ranks suggests that at least some of the top 10 institutions share scores in the 90s, and the boundary between the top 10 and the next group falls at or near the 90-point threshold.

Subject Rank	Institution	Country/Region	Academic Reputation	Employer Reputation	Citations	Overall Score
1	Harvard University	United States of America	99.8	100	82.8	99
2	University of Oxford	United Kingdom	100	96.4	79	97.6
3	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom	98.3	95.7	81.5	96.7
4	Yale University	United States of America	96.4	91.8	85.6	94.4
5	Stanford University	United States of America	91.7	95.4	83.3	92.8
6	National University of Singapore (NUS)	Singapore	96.4	88.8	78.7	91.8
7	New York University (NYU)	United States of America	94.1	81.9	81.6	90.4
8	Columbia University	United States of America	89.8	86	81.7	89.4
9	The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)	United Kingdom	89.2	84.6	81.8	88.2
10	University of California, Berkeley (UCB)	United States of America	89.1	83	83.7	87.9
11	The University of Melbourne	Australia	88.7	78.2	79.8	86.2
12	University of Chicago	United States of America	87.3	73.5	83.5	84.1
13	UCL	United Kingdom	84.5	76.5	82.9	84
13	The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney)	Australia	87.2	72.4	81	84
15	The University of Edinburgh	United Kingdom	87.7	75.5	77.5	83.8
16	King’s College London	United Kingdom	86.9	75.5	77.2	83.7
17	The University of Sydney	Australia	87.5	73.1	80.2	83.3
18	University of Toronto	Canada	83.6	79.8	78.4	83.2
19	Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne	France	92.8	72.9	71.5	82.2
20	The University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong SAR, China	85	75.1	81.1	82.1

For applicants focused on elite law programs, the practical takeaway is that the top 10 is a tightly clustered group with very high scores, and the drop-off to the next tier — the 80–89 band, which contains 21 institutions — is meaningful but not insurmountable. The 70–79 band, with 64 institutions, represents the broad middle of the ranking where most competitive law schools outside the very top tier reside.

Country-Level Insights for Prospective Students

The US presence is dominant not just in count but also in top-tier representation. With 62 ranked institutions, the US offers the largest number of options, and the top-ranked institution globally — Harvard University — is American. The UK, with 43 ranked institutions, is the second-largest contributor and holds multiple positions in the upper ranks, though the exact count of UK institutions in the top 10 or top 20 is not specified in the available data.

China (Mainland) and Italy each have 20 ranked law schools, but their distribution across rank bands is not detailed here. Australia, with 19, and Spain, with 15, also maintain substantial presences. For students choosing a country based on ranking availability, the US and UK clearly offer the most options, while countries like Brazil (11) and France (12) provide smaller but still notable selections.

Data Notes

The data in this article comes from the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026, published by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), with a data reference date of 2026-04-03. The Law subject ranking covers 403 institutions globally across 61 countries and regions. Rankings are parsed by subject block and filtered by country, with ranks taken as the lower-bound integer. Scores include academic reputation, employer reputation, citations, H-index, and international research network components, though only the overall score is discussed here. The country leaderboard reflects the number of ranked institutions per country, not the quality or rank distribution within each country. The rank bands and score bands are cumulative as presented in the source data. The median rank of 151.0 is provided as a single figure and is not derived from any calculation performed for this article. No extrapolation, prediction, or estimation has been made beyond the figures explicitly provided.