Adventures in Law School Advertising: Cornell. Ever heard of it?

UPDATE: IP Law. Ever heard of it?
Cornell may be considered the Lady Gaga of law schools, but the school is choosing to identify itself with a different celebrity.
Cornell Law School’s website has a rotating series of promotional items, including a video of current students talking about the “geniuses” there, a link to a WSJ Law Blog post entitled “The Dream of Every Recent College Grad: To Go To Cornell Law School,” and a video of students talking about why they chose the school. And then there’s this:

That would be über tool Andy Bernard of The Office. If you click on the link to “Read More,” it takes you to an Entertonement page with some of the fictional character’s greatest Cornell lines, such as:

Creed: It’s pronounced “Colonel,” it’s the highest rank in the military.
Andy: It’s pronounced “Cornell,” it’s the highest rank in the Ivy League!

Just because your school attains pop culture status doesn’t mean it’s a good thing…


A running joke in The Office is that Andy Bernard, played by Ed Helms, went to Cornell and that he’s smug about it. It doesn’t exactly cast Cornell in the most positive light. But, apparently, the Law School is pleased that this has helped raised the school’s profile, even if it simultaneously endorses negative stereotypes about its alumni.
One Cornell law student is not happy about his school endorsing the affiliation:

1. He’s a fictional character
2. The fact that he went to Cornell is the whole joke.
3. He went to Cornell undergrad, not the law school.
4. Is this some survey that applicants took?
5. If you click the link it takes you to a weird website.
6. “Andy Bernard of Scranton (from NBC’s the Office)” Who wrote that abysmal sentence?
7. If this is how Cornell attracts applicants, it explains a lot about the types of people you meet in Ithaca.

We’re not sure whether Cornell Law School actually surveyed this year’s record number of applicants about who influenced their decision to apply.
But we can do our own survey. Is affiliating itself with Andy Bernard a good idea for Cornell Law School?

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Cornell Law School Applications Increase By Record 52 Percent [Cornell Daily Sun]
The Dream of Every Recent College Grad: To Go to Cornell Law [WSJ Law Blog]
Earlier: Is Cornell the Lady Gaga of Law Schools? (Plus: celebrity comparisons for other law schools.)

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