Top 10 Law Schools Based on Social Life Ranking

Summary: Graduateprograms.com surveyed students to find the top law schools that provide the best social environments.

To name a law school a “party school” sounds absurd, but as experts have revealed recently, lawyers are neat on the streets but freaks in the sheets! So it makes sense that aspiring lawyers would want to find a way to blend their studies with a raging social life, or more realistically a campus that does everything it can to make its students happy.

• Related: Best Law Schools Based on Salary Potential

Graduateprograms.com was the first to introduce lawyers and potential law students to the wonder of ranking law schools by party potential. According to Tipping the Scales, the website polled students from 2012 to 2014 to get an idea of what law schools offered the best student social lives. It asked almost 60,000 students from 1,500 graduate programs to rank their schools from 1 to 10, 1 being watching Netflix without the chill and 10 being  reality show worthy. The website then compiled a list of best law schools based on this data.

In 2014, the website found that the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law was the most fun school in all the land, with its students rating their social lives with an impressive 9.65 average. The other nine highly social schools also earned above 9 averages.

The list overall was a fun read, but the reasons students gave their school high marks was slightly uncertain. Was social life defined by raging parties? Dating? Or study-life balance? Was a party law school the same as an undergraduate party school? It’s hard to think of a 3L doing a Jell-O shot in a frat house, but in this day and age, nothing is surprising.

Below is Graduateprograms.com 2014 party law school list:

1. University of Florida
2. University of Colorado at Boulder
3. University of Texas at Austin
4. University of Georgia
5. University of Alabama
6. Washington University in St. Louis
7. University of Virginia
8. Northwestern University
9. University of Miami
10. University of San Francisco

Since then, Graduateprograms.com has updated its party ranking and created a more holistic list of the best schools. For their 2016 list, they surveyed students “across several areas, including quality of instruction, networking opportunities, and student financial services.” It seemed that this time around quality of life was king, not just party time.

Below are the GraduatePrograms.com’s best law schools of 2016:

1. Stanford University
2. University of California at Berkeley
3. University of Florida
4. University of Colorado at  Boulder
5. University of Alabama
6. Florida State University
7. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
8. Northwestern University
9. Harvard University
10. Arizona State University

Comparing the two lists, University of Florida, UC Boulder, University of Alabama, and Northwestern were the only schools to maintain the top spots with the new approach.

What do you think makes a law school experience great? Let us know in the comments below.