Situated on the sprawling Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois, the College of Law has been working to increase its presence on a national scale over the past decade. In particular, the school has expanded its faculty, adding 17 professors since 2003 and naming a new dean to the college in 2009. Illinois Law has also increased the variety of academic options, utilizing the resources of the university to offer a number of interdisciplinary subjects. The school has 10 academic programs, in areas that range from Asian law to law and philosophy, to legal history.

Illinois Law offers 12 formal joint degree programs, ranging from the traditional JD/MBA to a JD/DVM and the less conventional JD/MS in natural resources. The school also has a legal English certificate program, designed for LLM students who speak English as a second language.

Overall, the legal curriculum is standard, and students tell Vault that the workload is relatively light. Illinois Law, like many state schools, has great regional employment contacts, but its cache wanes outside of the Midwest. While still in school, law students largely live in on-campus housing, though rent in Champaign is cheap.