Cooley Law School
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Established | 1972 |
| Students | 2,943(As of 2005) |
| Location | Lansing, Michigan , United States |
| Campus | Urban |
| Website | http://www.cooley.edu |
Thomas M. Cooley Law School, located in Lansing, Michigan, is the largest law school in the United States measured on the basis of both full- and part-time enrollment. Cooley recently completed construction and renovation of its practical and classroom facilities. As a private law school, Cooley is the only law school in Michigan which is not affiliated with a university. The academic credentials of Cooley's faculty are published on the law school's website.
Named to honor the contribution and memory of Thomas M. Cooley, a nineteenth-century jurist and Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court who was prominent both within and outside of Michigan, the law school was established in 1972 by former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Thomas E. Brennan. The law school became fully accredited in 1978 by the American Bar Association. Today, Cooley has satellite campuses in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Rochester, Michigan.
Most students study toward earning the degree of Juris Doctor (J.D.), but Cooley also confers a Master of Laws degree (LL.M.) in Tax or in Intellectual Property, and cooperates in offering a joint-degree J.D./Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.) program. Cooley operates programs allowing ABA-approved foreign study credit in Toronto, Canada and Australia and New Zealand.
The law school offers clinical programs such as the Cooley Innocence Project, one of several Innocence Projects that are nationally recognized in the U.S. for the help such programs provide to innocent, incarcerated persons in obtaining DNA evidence and legal advocacy to overturn wrongful convictions. Cooley also offers an Elder law clinic, Sixty Plus, Inc., which provides free legal services to area senior citizens.
Cooley is currently the only accredited law school in the U.S. that does not require applicants to hold a bachelor's degree as a prerequisite to admission. The law school has developed a formula and methodology for those wanting to apply without a bachelor’s degree [[1]]. The law school was the first ABA-accredited law school in the nation to have an officially-recognized weekend program allowing students to earn a law degree by attending class on Saturdays and Sundays only.
Notable current and former faculty
- Spencer Abraham, former U.S. Senator and Secretary of Energy
- Hon. John W. Fitzgerald [2] former chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court
- Richard Henke, American Law Institute Member
- Joe Kimble, Research and Writing scholar and author of Lifting the Fog of Legalese: Essays on Plain Language
- Philip J. Prygoski, Constitutional Law expert and author, American Law Institute Member
- John P. Rooney, Property Law expert
Notable alumni
- Kelly Askin - J. Skelly Wright Fellow - Yale Law School
- Chris Chocola - U.S. Congressman
- John Engler - Former Governor of Michigan
- Bart Stupak - U.S. Congressman
- Steve Stobbs - Associate judge Third Judicial Circuit (Madison County, IL)
Statistics
- President: Don LeDuc
- Accreditations: American Bar Association, Higher Learning Commission, Michigan Department of Education, Michigan Board of Law Examiners
- Motto: In corde hominem est anima legis ("The spirit of the law is in the human heart.")
- Alumni: over 11,000
- Acceptance rate: 41.1%
- Student to faculty ratio: 23.6 to 1
- Attrition Rate: 1st Year - 23.1%; 2nd Year - 11.4% [3]
- Employment placement rate: 82%, 2005 graduates
- Number of states employed: 33
- Michigan bar exam passage rate: 63%
- Average starting salary: $49,000
- Tuition: $25,950, full time; $15,570, part time
- Percentage of Students Receiving Grants: 55.8%
- 2004-2005 Enrollment: 475, full time; 2,393, part time
- Enrollment by gender: Men: 59%, full time, 50%, part time; Women: 41%, full time, 50% part time
- 64% of the law school's student body are from outside Michigan
- The average indebtedness of graduates who incurred law school debt is estimated at $75,700
Rankings and prestige
- Cooley's own ranking system, "Judging the Law Schools," lists Cooley as the 18th best law school in the nation--ranking the law school superior to Stanford Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, among others. [4]
- Thomas M. Cooley Law School was recently selected the 2006 winner of the E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award as selected by the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Professionalism, for Cooley's program "Creating a Culture of Professionalism in Law School: The Thomas M. Cooley Law School Experience." [5]
The law school's motto
The law school's Latin motto was written during the 1970s by former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Thomas E. Brennan with the help of his pastor at the time. Judge Brennan originally described the meaning as "The spirit of the law is in the hearts of men". Women in a newly-formed female organization called the Cooley Action Team (CAT) brought to his attention that the motto should also refer to "the hearts of women". Justice Brennan responded that based on his Latin experience from high school, the Latin word for men and humankind were identical. [6] Judge Brennan's formulation of the motto remains in place today.
Criticisms and controversies
Some consider Thomas M. Cooley Law School to be among the worst ABA-accredited law schools in the United States [7] [8], while others consider it to be adequate since it is an ABA-accredited law school [9] (but see [10] regarding secondary campuses). The tuition is deemed by some to be moderately high for a law school. This, combined with allegations that the law school admits applicants that are comparatively unqualified and then encourages them to continue their enrollment even though it appears they are failing, has led to the criticism that the school is more interested in tuition revenue than the development of successful attorneys, [11] [12] [13]. The school's own position is that everyone should be given a chance, and that the skills required of a lawyer are different from those required of a test-taker or a student. Thomas M. Cooley Law School extends generous scholarships to students with high LSAT scores and high law school GPAs. [14] Students who would not be admitted to most other law schools may still be admitted to Cooley, but not immediately -- giving them a chance to mature. (The relatively high attrition rate suggests that not all students mature sufficiently.)
A recent letter posted by the LSAC and endorsed by the law school deans acknowledges that the current commercial law school ranking systems are inherently flawed and that all 192 ABA-approved law schools have met the same standard of quality to become accredited.[15] (Though this should obviously not be confused with a statement that all 192 schools are equally strong, or that all 192 schools meet only the minimum requirements of ABA certification.)
The stated value propounded by the law school is that the study of law should be open to as many people as possible and should not constitute "an elitist profession." [16] Others respond to the criticism by saying that the law school does in fact graduate successful lawyers, e.g. [17], [18],[19], and teaches the same interpretations of law, utilizes similar casebooks, and makes as extensive a use of the Socratic method, as any other accredited law school. It is the opinion of some that the Cooley definition of "success" is dubious at best, aimed, for a majority of its students, more toward bar examination passage (given what is perhaps an overemphasis in many U.S. States on the predictive value of the multiple-choice Multistate Bar Examination) rather than the widespread and even recognition of true academic excellence within its student body, especially where credence is given to the position that multiple-choice questions and answers are generally inconsistent with the values of diversity of opinion and of perception. It is the opinion of some that the quality of the instruction is reflected in the law school's attrition rate, while others believe that such a high attrition rate is to be expected when a law school admits a large number of part-time students and specifically aims to give underprivileged students a chance, and emphasize that it remains an ABA-accredited school.
The school's annual ranking system also remains contentious, as it ranks Cooley among the top schools in the nation. The ranking system considers factors not included in most other rankings, such as the physical size of the law school's buildings, available seats in the library, and number of students. As such, some believe that the rankings will inevitably favor extremely large schools, regardless of their quality, over smaller schools like Stanford or the University of Chicago. Some therefore believe that the rankings are designed to rank Cooley highly as a marketing ploy, and point to the fact that the rankings place a high emphasis on factors that would favor Cooley, yet exclude several factors on which Cooley would not rank highly, such as attrition rates and gender diversity. Others believe that the rankings are an attempt to discredit the idea of school "quality" and to encourage more mediocre students to try to become lawyers, and are therefore a valid, if debatable, exercise.