Law Schools

Cooley Law May Be Forced To Close One Of Its Campuses

Will Cooley Law be one of the first schools to succumb to the pressures of the new normal?

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Earlier this month, we were the first to break the news that due to continuing declines in both enrollment and revenue, Cooley Law School — a five-campus empire that’s regarded by some as one of the worst schools in the nation — would not only be conducting faculty and staff layoffs, but would also stop accepting first-year students at its Ann Arbor campus. At the time, a member of Cooley’s administration said there were no present plans to phase out the Ann Arbor campus.

Alas, it looks like those plans may have changed.

Will Cooley Law be one of the first schools to succumb to the the pressures of the new normal and close down an entire satellite campus?

Please note the update at the bottom of this post.

According to an email that was sent out to students at Cooley Law’s Ann Arbor campus, it would appear that the administration is having second thoughts about keeping the struggling satellite campus.

Before we get to the details of that email, here’s a little history on the Ann Arbor campus. The Cooley campus first opened in 2009 in a building that previously housed the Ave Maria School of Law. It’s widely known that the Ann Arbor location was the smallest of Cooley’s collection of campuses, and considering the school’s dramatic decline in enrollment — down by 62 percent since 2010, per the National Law Journal — perhaps the Ann Arbor campus was acting as a leech on Cooley’s funds.

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As for the email students received, it seems that Deans Don LeDuc and Joan Vestrand met with students last week to let them know what was going on with their home campus in Ann Arbor. The campus may or may not “be consolidated with other Cooley campuses at the end of the Michaelmas 2014 term.” Affected students will know what’s going on in their lives by the end of the fall 2014 semester.

Cooley is offering a variety of prizes incentives to keep students from its Ann Arbor in attendance at one of its other campuses in Grand Rapids, Auburn Hills, and Tampa, Florida, including, but not limited to:

  • Early registration for the January 2015 term, continuing through graduation;
  • Retention of financial aid packages, regardless of campus chosen;
  • A $1,500 cash payment for their troubles; and
  • A $3,500 bar review stipend to be advanced during the final semester.

We’ve reached out to Cooley for comment, but have yet to hear back. We will update this post if we do.

In the meantime, students who are being offered this package should take some time to consider it wisely. Knowing all of the facts that are available about job prospects from any Cooley campus, some may say it would be foolhardy to stay enrolled. Not long ago, the school received a negative rating from S&P. Just 26.9 percent of the 1,143 graduates of Cooley’s class of 2013 were working as lawyers in full-time, long-term positions nine months after graduation. Cooley failed to report to U.S. News the average debt load of its most recent graduating class, but at last count, that number was about $122,395 per student. Cooley recently pledged to “keep any tuition increase as low as possible,” yet previously instituted a nine percent hike during a time when most law schools were significantly cutting or freezing tuition.

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Is this really the school that you want to attend? Think long and hard about the answer to that question.

UPDATE (3:30 p.m.): We just received this statement from James Robb, Cooley’s Associate Dean for External Affairs and Senior Counsel:

It is true that we notified students at our Ann Arbor campus about a possible consolidation with other Cooley campuses. It is important to note, however, that the decision to consolidate has not been made. Rather, we wanted to let the students know what we are considering in case we do make that decision. No time frame has been established for that decision.

(You can see the full email that was sent to students on the next page.)

Earlier: Much Maligned Law School Cuts First-Year Class, Announces Layoffs

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