NLSIU
NLUD
NALSAR
NUJS
NLUJ
GNLU
NLIU
HNLU
RMLNLU
NLUO
RGNUL
MNLU Mumbai
NUALS
MNLU Nagpur
CNLU
DSNLU
NUSRL
NLU Assam
NLU Trichy
MNLU Aurangabad
NLU Shimla
NLU Jabalpur
NLU Sonipat

P.S. - Please don't hate me. I have given my views. Feel free to differ. :-)

I think it is thoroughly biased and really devoid of practical realities to put NALSAR and NUJS below NLUD. NLS, NALSAR and NUJS are still a preference for most of my recruiting partners, and this trend has been there for past 20 years and I perceive is here to stay for sometime. Speaking from my experience of being PA of a partner who is a recruiting partner for the firm. But yes we do visit the other top 6 in the list. And yes we do give chances to meritorious students across NLUs and even non NLUs.

It's extremely unlikely you'll get an unbiased view- most people here would have confirmation bias. Current students and alumni would obviously place their alma mater over ranking-neighbouring rival law schools.
The truth is, your choice doesn't matter WITHIN a particular tier of law schools. Your career outcomes will largely be the same within the top NLUs. I'll attempt a non-watertight ranking, but you should take it with a grain of salt, as you should with every other list here,
Notwithstanding NIRF,
1. NLSIU
2. NALSAR=NLUD
3. NUJS
4. NLUJ
5. GNLU=NLIU
6. HNLU=MNLU

This is pretty much the only ranking that you should follow based on administration, infrastructure, placements and future growth:

1. NLSIU, Banglore
2. NLU Delhi/ NALSAR, Hyderabad
3. NUJS, Kolkata
4. NLU Jodhpur
5. GNLU, Gandhinagar/ NLIU, Bhopal
6. HNLU, Raipur
7. RMLNLU, Lucknow/ NLUO, Odisha
8. RGNUL, Patiala
9. MNLU Mumbai
10.NUALS, Kochi

Rest are almost the same (except the really new ones) and you can decide based on proximity, location, infrastructure or any other personal preferences.

PS- I have placed MNLU, Mumbai after RGNUL because its performance has been underwhelming even after all the hype regarding the location. Two batches have passed out, there is no campus, placements are non-existent, heavy state domicile quota, high fees etc. It is better to go for an established NLU with a better alumni base and infrastructure.

Same except NLSIU>NALSAR>NUJS=NLUD

Ask any NLS grad of later 2000s or early 2010s, (I am 2013 NLS passout). The only law school we even considered as competition was NALSAR. I am surprised at the number of answers piping NLU D above NALSAR and NUJS. It is a great law school. But it is definitely not above NALSAR, and I MAY consider it as somewhat of same footing as NUJS, but definitely not superior to NUJS. Since a fresh CLAT aspirant might be betting his/her life based on this thread, it is important that they know the industry perspective as well, and not just base their decision on some NIRF ranking or India Today ranking.

Sorry, but this is a misleading (even if subjective) opinion. Your reference period for which is a better college is clearly outdated and using that to push your ranking narrative is quite untenable. Back when you were in your law school, NLUD did not even have one batch that had yet graduated so it's not surprising that you considered NALSAR (and NUJS) as your competition. But to say that the classification still applies today is wilfully ignorant of reality.

If you are talking only about corporate law firm placements, then yeah, I guess the older NLUs (including even NLUJ and NLIU, maybe even GNLU) might be more than NLUD in absolute numbers, but in reference to the college as a whole (which includes faculty and administration, infrastructure, co-curriculars, funding, research opportunites, academic exposure, etc.), NLUD is definitely ahead of NUJS and on par (if not already ahead of) with NALSAR. I'm not pushing this based on NIRF, btw, I have interacted with people from nearly all these universities and heard their experiences.

Bro 6.2.2, the person most likely is a practicing legal professional from the best law school of India. Please do not dismiss her/his opinion so easily. Even if she/he is talking of 2013 as one reference period, that doesn't mean they are totally clueless of today's practical realities. To be honest apart from vying head to head with NLS on recruitments, brand name, age of inception, rhodes, foreign law firms, foreign LLMs, great debating-mooting culture it has the best campus among the top 5. Huge and beautiful. The campus alone will make me pick it over NLU D, seeing the other variables are anyways top notch.

Speaking for my firm. We do not have any particular preference. But in the world of ivy leagues, NIRF and QS we do have a "soft" ranking order:
1. NLSIU
2. NALSAR
3. NUJS
4. NLUD
5. NLUJ
6. GNLU
7. NLIU=HNLU
8. Talented student from all other law schools have SAME chance to get recruited. No one is lesser than the other.

We might have a soft ranking of law schools in our mind and I will not deny that, but there is NO RANKING when it comes to talent. So yes we do visit the top 3 a lot as a rule, but we do not shy away when it comes to talent and we gave PPO to a guy from a really unknown law school. And yes we are a big firm.

PS. the old school partners still somehow do have a soft corner for the traditional top law schools (Read NLSIU and others). The new age partners are more flexible.

As a fellow associate in Big 6 I agree with this statement. This is the best way to put it. I will be fairly clear here, a new age law school, no matter however good in NIRF ranking will not automatically dethrone NLS, NALSAR and NUJS who have heralded the new legal education system in India. Talk to old school teachers like Mittal, Ajappa, MP Jain, Mustafa and they will tell you how much blood and sweat was spent behind these three. Madhav Menon was still very active till early 2000s and the amount of work he has done not just for his NLS but NALSAR and NUJS in terms of grants, support, media limelight, bringing law firms and litigators to campus for hiring/teaching etc. is the sort of legacy that these three have been bestowed with. This is not against any later founded law schools. They are doing great as well. But the old world charm of NLS, NALSAR and NUJS lingers on much like it is for say IIT Kharagpur, IIT Bombay and IIT Nagpur and no NIRF ranking will be able to change it in near future. Having said that I will say in my firm all top 6 law schools would more or less fall in the same band. But pure number of recruitment wise it is more or less NLS,NALSAR and NUJS in the top three.

Think of NLUs as bands.
T-1
1. NLS.
2. NALSAR.
3. NUJS.
4. NLUD.

T+1+
1. NLUJ
2. NLIU
3. GNLU

T-2
1. HNLU
2. NLUO
3. RML
4. NUALS
5. RGNLU

(Ps: MNLU Mumbai I would say is still in T-2. But they are super super impressive. They will soon reach T-1+ (3-4 years) and T-1 in 6-8 years).

T-3 - rest - typically based on how old the NLU is. Heard

How has MNLU Mumbai impressed you exactly? I keep asking this question on this platform, but nobody responds to it, sadly. I will be glad to see any supporting stats in terms of moots won, placements, research produced, faculty profile, legal aid work done, scholarships awarded, basically anything that an NLU is known for.

Wow, it looks as if the NALSAR and NUJS troll armies have gone into full swing in downvoting into oblivion every comment that ranks NLUD ahead of either of them. When all other arguments have failed, they have started saying that the "old school charm" (crumbling infrastructure, perhaps?) of older law schools should put them ahead of the newer ones. Amazing to what extent they'll go to cover up their insecurities about a newer law school having done convincingly better than them (albeit on certain parameters and not on all).

While I give due regard for recruiters' preferences, any prospective law student reading this must remember that many of these recruiters are older graduates of NLS, NALSAR or NUJS and even though they won't be revealing that here, they would definitely have a preference for choosing students from their alma mater over others (for instance, if there were two equally competent students, one from X-NLU and another from the recruiting partner's NLU, the latter would generally be preferred).
The fact that NLUD (which is still too young to have partners at the recruiting level right now) is apparently fourth in their preference list shows you just how much the college has grown in a short time.

Also, a good example of how recruitments have gotten better as more graduates reach higher positions is with respect to GNLU. Until about five-six years ago, GNLU recruitments were quite poor, both in absolute numbers and in the number of big 6 firms recruiting. However, as the college grew in repute thanks to better funding and student achievements and more of their graduates proved their mettle in senior positions at law firms, it has now gone above even a much older NLIU in recruitment preferences and its recruitment numbers.

But corporate recruitments are not the be-all and end-all of a legal education. Also, nowhere has it been said that this is list is purely a recruitment ranking so it's a little misleading to hype up NUJS and equate it with NLUD when the former has been riddled with poor administration, good faculty exiting and government interference (domicile, for example) for the past 5 years or so. Maybe the student quality has not drastically declined inspite all that, but that doesn't mean the law school experience remains as good as it may have been for older graduates. My point is not to say that one NLU is better than another in every sense, but to show that NLUs are dynamic (and not static) institutions that change, grow and improve/deteriorate.

I would advise anyone judging all these comments to take them with a pinch of salt and actually speak to real people and research on all these colleges yourself before choosing. These older law school people who are now bashing NIRF for ranking NLUD ahead of NALSAR and NUJS would be more than happy to say that it's the best guide if their institute were to be ranked ahead (I'm not saying that NIRF is correct in every sense but just to highlight the implicit bias by alumni of any one college).

P.S.: I know this comment will be downvoted to hell as well for my views but a student shouldn't be choosing their institution based on upvotes and downvotes on a blatantly opinionated website. Also @Kian, it would be very misleading to mark this "trollish" or "contested" because everything I have said is true and verifiable.

LOL, it is quite funny how the NALSAR and NUJS folks are absolutely losing it over NLUD being ranked ahead of them. They’re making it a point to downvote every comment and clarify that they’re better/as good.

Look kids, if you were really that much better, then you don’t have to keep shouting it out. People will know. Might want to work on actually improving your college’s all-round statistics rather than having some alumni “recruiting partner” hand you down an obsolete rank to soothe your ego.

You are calling yourself Superman and accusing others of shouting things out? I remember the marketing and PR gimmicks NLUD used in the first five-six years of its existence, including having souvenir cups (maybe you're too young to remember those, kid). I will also love to know what contribution their students have made to establish that they are 'ahead of' the other law school students as you are trying to opine. You are disparaging law firm jobs as 'handed down by alum'. Pray tell then why do the NLUD students apply for those jobs? You can also take litigation, moots, foreign scholarships, pretty much every graduate metric. I still don't see NLUD students having surpassed any student from the other 3 NLUs yet. Sure they are doing good. Just as surely there is no evidence yet of them doing better than the others. And that's after proclaiming 'stellar faculty' and 'huge state government funding' for over a decade now. If the students have got all those advantages and still they aren't doing any better than the others ostensibly, then either the students aren't good enough to seize the advantages (an augment that I don't agree with), or those supposed advantages haven't actually translated into imparting better quality of education in reality. As for downvoting, every inane comment with any personal ranking system should be downvoted and marked trollish.

Actually, NALSAR or NUJS are not shouting it out that they are better than NLUD or any place else for that matter. Over the years, it is actually people purporting to be from NLUD who have been proclaiming NLUD's supremacy on this forum. In truth, there is absolutely no indication in the graduate outcome of these three places of the NLUD students being better than those from NALSAR or NUJS. Only one thing can be objectively concluded (that too arguably based on certain assumptions) - NALSAR and NLUD students usually land more corporate jobs, while NLUD students crack UPSC more regularly. The first one is definitely dependent on institutional reputation to some extent, while the latter depends entirely on the calibre of the individual and does not really reflect anything about the institution. At the end of the day, universities are known for their students, and not by any random sarkari or personal ranking. Ranking of institutions is in itself a faulty process, including those like Times and QS that the colonial mindset of many people makes them salivate about. Nobody who actually provides personal rankings here on the comments section is actually working in the industry - only jobless students and/or trolls pull such stunts or indulge in such useless pissing contests.

Chill Superman! No one is shouting it out! In fact if anything I see the comments of "older" NLS NALSAR people are looking more mature and yours are looking totally childish.

The NLS NALSAR people are very freely accepting that NLU D is a great college. No 11 and No 10 comments on the other hand downright just want to bash down the old trinity of law schools. Shows your lack of experience.

No 10 even goes on to say the recruiting partners have a bias towards their alma matter. This is such a sick allegation. A recruiting partner is one of the most trusted name of the firm. The firm is trusting them to take the right decisions! They are expected to and in my experience mostly are fairly neutral. Do you think they have time in firms to go through your childish arguments over how NLU D is the best in the world? NO. They have a firm to run and decisions to make. In their wisdom and as numbers of past decade are any clue, NLS and NALSAR are the best in terms of recruitment and brand name in India. NUJS and these days NLU D and even NLU J are quickly catching up.

Why is this hurting your EGO? In fact your comments are JUST talking about NLU D. While their comments are respectful of all top 5 top 6 colleges. Plus time and again they have mentioned talent does not have anything to do with ranking. I see that as more kind than No 10 and No 11.

No 11 further takes the conspiracy level to ANOTHER HIGH. It says Nalsar-Nujs people are downvoting their comments. As if ONLY Nalsar-Nujs people visit legally india. Get a life man!

In which dream is NLU D ranked above NALSAR? Wakey wakey. Tomorrow you will say NLU D is over NLSIU. And while you guys are alleging. Ranbir Singh is in lot of Govt. Committees these days, so many people are not even counting on this so called government NIRF ranking piping NLU D above everyone else. And what about QS ranking telling Sonepat as no 2 law college of India? I don't give a shit about these rankings. The word in the industry and academic circles is clear on the top 2 at least. Has been for the past two decades.

1. NLSIU
2. NALSAR
3. NLU Delhi
4. NUJS
5. NLIU
6. NLU Jodhpur
7. GNLU
8. HNLU
9. RGNUL
10. RMLNLU
11. NUALS
12. MNLU Mumbai
13. NLU Odisha

Others not worth attending and giving 5 years of your life :)

Some of them worse than a decent law college like Amity Noida.

The only law school NALSAR competes with is NLS. It is funny how NLUD are even equating their rank with NALSAR or even worse are thinking NALSAR is below them. Tomorrow NLUD will say it is better than Harvard. Doesn't matter what you or the administration and NIRF propaganda says. I see a tinge of disrespect and inhumanity in NLU D comments. The by NLS/NALSAR alums on this thread seems much more respectful and mature.

There is no Need to compare nlud with nalsar ,both are good but don't think that nls is above all in term of students quality but no doubt ,presently ,nls faculty is the best .kindly start respecting other institutions without vanity of year of establishment, alumni network.....