India today has ranked NALSAR as the best law school in the country followed by NLSIU, Bangalore and NLIU, Bhopal.  

According to the India Today website, the magazine partnered with The Nielsen Company and conducted the survey to determine the best undergraduate colleges in India in six disciplines namely Arts, Science, Commerce, Engineering, Medical and Law.

There is some disparity between what is published in the print edition and the online edition. Therefore, we have decided to publish both the ranking tables and the parameters. Although there is no change in the rankings, there are some disparities in the table and the parameters.  

The print version of the article mentions an overall score of the law schools which enables us to determine the college rankings. NALSAR scored 100 while NLSIU, Bangalore was a distant second with an overall score of 80.11. ILS, Pune which was ranked as the best law school in 2005 was ranked 7th, with an overall score of 55.42. 

The Rankings and the parameters listed in the magazine are mentioned below*. 

*The magazine edition ranks the entire Faculty of Law, Delhi University as Rank 4, while the online version mentioned below ranks Campus Law Centre (which is one of the colleges affiliated to the Delhi University)  as Rank 4.

The Online version of the rankings and the parameters are mentioned below. 

Few months back they conducted an online poll to rank colleges. But this doesn’t find a mention in the explanation of ranking system.

Step two of the ranking system is explained as “The experts were asked to distribute 100 points amongst five parameters- Reputation of Colleges, Quality of Academic Input, Student Care, Infrastructure and Job Prospects. Hence, weightage of each of these parameters was derived.”

The experts were asked to rate according to their perception. The perception of the experts might not be the actual scenario. For eg: Job Prospects of a college can be evaluated only after studying the placement pattern of the students, how can this be perceived by an expert without any statistical study?

Another concern with the methodology is; For the parameter wise rankings National Law University, Jodpur was ranked 8 in placements and Symbiosis Law School was ranked 6. Bar & Bench has earlier covered placements of both NLUJ and Symbiosis.  These reports indicate NLUJ has 84.84% placements and Symbiosis has 41.1 % placements. This is very much enough to indicate the ranking is flawed. The difference between the placements is almost double.

Also NLSIU was ranked 1 in placements, NUJS ranked 4 and NALSAR was ranked 2. Interestingly NLIU Bhopal was ranked 3. Bar & Bench has earlier reported that NLSIU, NALSAR and NUJS have got cent percent placements after the analysis of recruitment data received from the colleges. So differential ranking of these colleges in placements factor also seems to be flawed.

Another concern with the methodology is for the parameter wise rankings; Christ College of Law, GLC, Mumbai and Bharati Vidyapeeth's New Law College, Pune; for these three colleges, India Today has not given parameter rankings and has ranked them 15, 16 and 17 respectively. Also for Faculty of Law, the ICFAI University (ICFAI Law School),Dehradun, Faculty of Law, University of Lucknow and Faculty of Law, University of Allahabad, Allahabad  India Today has not given parameter rankings and has been ranked 19,22 and 25 respectively.

Earlier Bar & Bench has reported that “The Week” magazine has come out with rankings with no indication as to methodology.

India Today has been ranking colleges since 1998. Here are their rankings of various law schools.