Research is central to intellectual life at the School of Law. The School is a vibrant academic community of law teachers, legal scholars, social scientists, and legal philosophers. If one had to state in single word what law schools are for in a democratic society, it would be “service.” An important way law schools serve community, state, and world is in their research. To use an analogy from law practice, the client of the law school is the legal system. We serve in our research and as well as in our teaching and in our engagement with our communities.

Research at the School of Law is widely recognised as attaining levels of global standing and international excellence. The School celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2012. It is a relatively young law school, which makes innovation something of second nature in its research environment. The School still displays the energy and enthusiasm of youth in its drive to promote an international research reputation. In recent years its progress has accelerated rapidly through attracting and retaining talented and energetic senior and junior staff, and developing and fostering their work in an environment that remains vibrant and responsive to research initiatives in both traditional and pioneering areas of inquiry, including work at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary inquiry. The School's ambition bore fruit in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008, in which it achieved the most dramatic improvement in research quality of any law school in the UK. 45% of our research was assessed to be world leading or to meet the criteria for international excellence and 95% was recognised to have achieved the international standard. This breadth of international level research activity was attained by only 11 of the 67 Law Schools in the RAE 2008. It has augmented its strengths with the addition of the discipline of Criminology to the School. Criminology brings to the School a highly developed research agenda in the empirical social sciences. The Centre for Criminal Justice and Criminology achieved the best RAE 2008 result in the Social Sciences at Swansea and is top in its field in Wales, with 60% of its research rated as either world leading or internationally excellent. The School provides a total research package to understanding the complex social problems with which the law has to contend.

The School of Law promotes the research agendas through its University Research Centres . The resulting vibrant research environment is evidenced in publication in academic journals, in books published by academic presses, in international conferences, research seminar series, well as in the diffusion, transfer and impact of research conducted.