Cooley Law / Thomas M. Cooley Law School

Morning Docket: 07.23.12

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* Presidential campaigns for Election 2012 are focusing in on the Supreme Court and future appointments to the high court, and Vice President Joe Biden is really not a fan of Justice Scalia. [POLITICO]

* Dewey know what the ramifications of D&L’s $50M insurance policy will mean for the resolution of the failed firm’s bankruptcy proceedings? Well, Steve Davis is probably happy. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Howrey going to pay off all of our creditors? Probably by dipping into the coffers of the 70 other law firms that took on our defectors. Have fun with all of those subpoenas. [Capital Business / Washington Post]

* The percentage of women in Biglaw partnership positions is up 2.8% since 2003, but the equity gender gap remains. At least some progress is being made. [National Law Journal]

* “I thought your papers were terrific, I just disagreed with them.” Kleiner Perkins isn’t a fan of backhanded compliments, so the firm is appealing a judge’s decision to keep Ellen Pao’s case out of arbitration. [Reuters]

* James Holmes, the alleged shooter in the Aurora movie-theater massacre, is scheduled to make his first court appearance today for an initial advisement. Thus far, he’s facing at least 71 charges. [Denver Post]

* The class action suit filed against Cooley Law over its allegedly deceptive employment statistics has been dismissed, much like the NYLS lawsuit before it. More on the dismissal to come later today. [WSJ Law Blog]

* “Sex isn’t going to buy me dinner.” Michael Winner, the attorney accused of offering “pro boner” assistance to female inmates, claims in an interview that the allegations against him are “just plain false.” [WSB-TV Atlanta]

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Law School Litigation Update: Kurzon LLP Sues Cooley Law School for Defamation

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You may recall that in July 2011, Craigslist ads started popping up in search of plaintiffs for a possible lawsuit against the second-best law school in all the land, the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. Those ads were posted by David Anziska, one of the leaders of what is now known as the law school litigation movement. Anziska, along with Jesse Strauss, formerly held positions at Kurzon Strauss (now known as Kurzon LLP), a small law firm in New York led by managing partner Jeffrey Kurzon.

Shortly after the ads were posted, Cooley Law fired back with a defamation complaint against the firm, alleging in a school-wide announcement that Team Strauss/Anziska and Kurzon Strauss had been “unethically soliciting former and present Cooley students to join in a class action lawsuit.” One month later, that very class-action lawsuit was filed, and rocked the world of legal education as we know it — calls for reform were made, and career services offices scrambled to clean up their employment statistics.

Perhaps Cooley Law wasn’t as superstitious as it should have been, because now, one year later, the little law firm that could has launched an additional suit against Cooley Law and its dean, Don LeDuc, this time alleging that the law school’s public claims against Kurzon LLP were false and defamatory….

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TTTrading Places: Law Schools Acquire New Territory

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Law school deans should bet a dollar on whether or not change the name of a law school makes more people come.

And the band plays on. No matter what happens in the economy. No matter what kind of evidence we get that the market for legal jobs is totally in the tank. No matter what, law schools continue to expand and continue to find new ways to convince more people to spend a lot of money getting an education that might not lead to employment.

Of course, I’m talking about something new and annoying Cooley did, because you basically can’t have a conversation about what is wrong with law schools anymore without referencing some kind of fresh horror enacted by the people who run the Thomas M. Cooley Law School.

But this impulse towards MOAR LAW STUDENTS obviously isn’t just a Cooley problem. Even though some schools that are already in the law game have thoughtfully looked at reducing class sizes, there are always going to be schools and universities eager to provide prospective law students with educations they can waste money on.

Time for some stories about law school acquisitions, a plague that has now made it all the way down to Texas…

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Comment of the Week: My Three Biggest Fears

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We’ve got some major news since our last installment of the Comment of the Week series: the first winner out of four rounds of the competition has claimed his prize. Congratulations again to guest9999999, who proved that at least one person reads these columns. I suppose we’ve got to cherish the small things in life.

This week, when choosing our top comment, we decided to go with one from a post that all of the Above the Law editors thought was pretty funny, but in the end, the topic apparently made our readers believe that I was even dumber than they had originally thought — as if such a thing were even humanly possible.

Of course, I’m talking about the Cooley Law shoeshiner post….

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Morning Docket: 06.15.12

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Now a dangerous weapon in MA.

* The first day of jury deliberations in the Rajat Gupta insider-trading case ended without a verdict. Benula Bensam’s boredom is epic — the poor girl can’t even blog about the trial anymore. [Bloomberg]

* Baker & McKenzie is celebrating its 50th year in Toronto, Canada by handing out spring bonuses luring in lateral hires. Welcome aboard to Kent Beattie, formerly of Slavies Davies. [Globe and Mail]

* You can run, you can hide, but you can’t escape Sandusky’s love. Alleged Victim No. 9 testified that he screamed for help in vain while staying in the former coach’s allegedly “soundproof” basement. [CNN]

* It’s hard out here for a shoeshiner: Cooley Law grads suing their alma mater over allegedly misleading employment statistics may face an “uphill battle” when it comes to fraud allegations. [WSJ Law Blog]

* The CEO of Caesars Entertainment has proclaimed that he has “tremendous confidence” that online poker will become legal in the near future. So much for keeping your poker face on that one, eh? [MSN Money]

* Imagine my surprise when I found out that a yet another man in Springfield, MA, was arrested for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Here’s the surprise… the dangerous weapon was wasabi sauce. [TIME]

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Cooley Law Grad or Troll… Is There Even a Difference?
(C/O ’93 Grad Claims He’s Employed as a Shoeshiner)

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Yesterday, we brought you a story about Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s lack of interest in reducing its class sizes based on a “perceived benefit to society.” If you haven’t been paying attention, that “perceived benefit” could mean improved employment opportunities for Cooley Law graduates in a challenging legal job market. But perhaps the school’s administration could be convinced to change course when they catch wind of this purported graduate’s entrepreneurial employment situation.

We recently received a tip from a fellow who claims that he graduated from Cooley Law in 1993. It would seem that even as a graduate of the second-best law school in the nation, the job market was so tough that when someone told him to get his shine box, he took the phrase literally. He says he’s been working as a shoeshiner ever since.

We know that this seems absolutely wild, but to be honest, we couldn’t tell if we were being legitimately trolled, if only because he claimed to be a graduate of Cooley Law. We’ve provided our correspondence with this fellow after the jump….

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(C/O ’93 Grad Claims He’s Employed as a Shoeshiner)”

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Cooley Law Will Say Anything To Justify Its Behavior

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It’s pretty well established that the people running Thomas M. Cooley Law School have no sense of shame. They invented their own stupid law school rankings and then had the audacity to rank themselves #2. They’re already the second-biggest law school in the nation, but they’re opening another campus, this time in Florida. Cooley really doesn’t care what you think (or what the graduates who are suing them think), so long as there are enough prospective law students to fill their incoming class.

As we mentioned in Morning Docket, the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) did a big article this weekend about law schools that are taking a thoughtful approach to class size given the challenging legal job market. In the article, Cooley evidently didn’t mind looking like the thoughtless school that does what it wants and dares somebody to stop them.

Again, if you know Cooley’s history, that’s to be expected. It’s just their hypocrisy can be a little hard to swallow…

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Morning Docket: 06.11.12

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* Have you ever wondered why Justice Clarence Thomas hasn’t spoken during oral arguments before SCOTUS in more than six years? It’s probably because he hates them so much that he thinks we should “do away” with them entirely. [Charlotte Observer]

* Former Solicitor General Paul Clement, he of unparalleled oral advocacy skills, claims that there’s “no magic formula for time management” — but having a superior legal mind certainly helps the situation when preparing for argument. [Appellate Daily]

* It’s “highly likely” that Rajat Gupta will won’t take the witness stand to testify in his own defense at his insider-trading trial. Query what Benula Bensam would have written to Judge Rakoff about that. [Los Angeles Times]

* If you’re thinking of hopping on the “blame the ABA” bandwagon in defense of your employment statistics, think again. A federal judge rejected Cooley Law’s argument on that front last week. [National Law Journal]

* Meanwhile, Cooley “isn’t interested in reducing the size of its entering class on the basis of the perceived benefit to society,” but at least ten other schools will be reducing class sizes. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* A judge denied Jerry Sandusky’s motion to dismiss the charges against him. The former football coach clearly needed 1-800-REALITY check if he seriously thought that his request was going to be granted. [CNN]

* If you’re planning on living rent-free in New York City for almost a decade, make sure you’re doing it in a building that isn’t up to code. You’ll never be evicted thanks to this Court of Appeals ruling. [New York Times]

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Quote of the Day: The Broken Economics of Legal Education

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Brian Tamanaha

The average debt of law graduates tops $100,000, and most new lawyers do not earn salaries sufficient to make the monthly payments on this debt. More than one-third of law graduates in recent years have failed to obtain lawyer jobs. Thousands of new law graduates will enter a government-sponsored debt relief program, and many will never fully pay off their law school debt.

– Washington University Law professor Brian Tamanaha, author of Failing Law Schools (affiliate link), painting a rosy picture of what life is like for recent law school graduates.

(What can be done to remedy this situation? Additional insights from Professor Tamanaha, after the jump.)

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Quote of the Day: Exceeding Expectations of Idiocy

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Jeffrey Martlew

These numbers indicate the Tampa Bay area was ready for a law school.

– Thomas M. Cooley Law’s Associate Dean Jeffrey Martlew, commenting on a student enrollment that was double the size originally projected and “exceeded … expectations” at the law school’s new Tampa Bay campus in Florida.

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