UQ School of Law


The School of Law at the University of Queensland, founded in 1936, is the most-cited law school in Australia, the oldest and most prestigious law school in the Australian state of Queensland, and the sixth oldest law school out of 38 in Australia. Its alumni include six Australian High Court Justices including two Chief Justices of Australia.
The entering undergraduate class typically consists of about 200 LLB students per year, and admission is highly competitive, with minimum selection thresholds ranging around ATAR 99.00-98.00. UQ Law additionally offers LLM, MICLaw, MICLaw/MCom, MIL, MIR/MIL, MPhil and PhD degrees. Though no exact figure can be found, the total student enrolment is estimated to be 1200-1650 students.
The school, as part of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, works closely with several student associations including the University of Queensland Law Society Inc., the Justice and the Law Society and the Australian Legal Philosophy Students Association.

History

Although the School of Law began properly teaching in 1936, a Faculty of Law was established pro forma with the foundation of the University of Queensland in 1911. This enabled the University to confer ad eundem gradum degrees, an honorary degree recognising the award given by another university, and Doctors of Laws honoris causa, recognising the contribution of selected persons toward the establishment of the university.
A limited amount of law subjects began to be taught in 1926- when the first Garrick Professor of Law was appointed. However, this was under the ambit of the university's faculty of arts, as no law school had been properly established yet. In 1935 Thomas Charles Beirne endowed the university with £20,000, enabling the university's senate to officially approve the law school on 10 May 1935. In May 1936, students commenced studies under the newly formed TC Beirne School of Law.

Reputation and Student Achievements

In the past two years, two UQ Law graduates have won Rhodes scholarships. Eleven UQ Law students have won Fulbright Scholarships since 1955. Ten UQ Law students have won New Colombo Plan Scholarships or Mobility Grant Programs since 2014.
The UQ School of Law is well regarded as one of Australia's foremost schools for mooting; significant mooting achievements include the following:

Notable International Advocacy Competition Accolades

In 2015, UQ commissioned a refurbishment of the west wing of the heritage-listed Forgan Smith building; focused on re-imagining the School of Law and the Walter Harrison Law Library and signalling a re-imagined program restructure and smaller cohort size. in 2017, Brisbane based Architecture firm BVN completed the School of Law's Forgan Smith Building refurbishment. The re-imagined west wing of the Forgan Smith building has since won numerous awards:
University of Queensland's School of Law is Queensland's premier law school; usually achieving the highest rank for law of any Queensland university. The UQ School of Law is Australia's best academically-performing law school, as measured by the averaged QS citations per paper and QS H-Index citations ranking, at 27.5; ANU College of Law follows UQ Law at an averaged CPP & H-index ranking of 38.5.
When focusing on objective academic performance indicators, University of Queensland's School of Law performs extremely well, often appearing to be Australia's foremost law school: according to Quacquarelli Symonds, the school has ranked 1st for CPP in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020; and 1st, 3rd, and 2nd regarding H-index in 2018, 2019, and 2020 respectively. Globally, the school currently ranks =25th for QS' CPP metric and =30th for QS' H-Index citations metric.
Notably, UQ's Law School achieved a THE-WUR citation ranking of 3rd globally in 2017 - two positions above Yale Law School, six positions above top-ranked Duke Law School, and just one position below Harvard Law School. UQ's Law School also recently received a THE-WUR research ranking of 36th in the world.

Current and Previous Ranking Positions

'
Notable ranking positions have been emphasised.
20132014201520162017201820192020
QS Ranking by Subject =48 51-100 49 45 48 36 43 39
QS Citations Per Paper Ranking-74 80 76 =52 =35 24 =25
QS H-Index Citations Ranking-87 71 53 =46 =38 =47 =30
*THE-WUR Subject Rankings ----54 40 58 N/A
*THE-WUR Citations Ranking----3 10 56 N/A
*THE-WUR Research Ranking----55 44 36 N/A
**ARWU Law Subject Ranking----87 87 60 101-150

*THE-WUR ranks ahead of the current year.
The following publications are produced by staff and/or students at UQ Law:
The UQ School of Law's alumni include: