Our rich heritage reaches back to the very beginnings of UCL. A year after the university was founded in 1827, John Austin and Andrew Amos were appointed to UCL’s first Chairs in Jurisprudence and English Law, teaching such notable figures as J.S. Mill. UCL Laws was the first faculty of common law in England and the first university to offer degrees in English, rather than civil, law.

For almost two hundred years, we have led the world in the study and research of law, and contributed to the development of law and public policy in both national and international contexts. Since 1946, the Current Legal Problems lecture series has offered critical analysis of contemporary legal issues, featuring a wide range of methodological approaches to law.

We have achieved the highest rating in the last four instances of the Research Assessment Exercise, and across a range of student surveys and university leagues tables published over the previous five years, UCL Laws has been consistently ranked as one of the top law schools in the UK.