Cooley Law

Non-Sequiturs: 05.22.13

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* In the Western District of Arkansas, judges have to forfeit judicial immunity to go to the bathroom. So if you want to sue a judge, you need to catch them when their pants are literally down. [Hercules and the Umpire]

* Bowman v. Monsanto… in GIFs! [EffYeahSCOTUS]

* Cooley boy makes good! President Obama nominated Christopher Thomas, a Cooley Law School grad and professor, to the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. [White House]

* A judge threw out the fine against a New York artist as unconstitutionally harsh. The artist took an antenna from the trash and cops impounded his car and fined him $2,000. [Thompson Reuters News & Insight]

* The Ninth Circuit struck down Arizona’s “Fetal Pain” Abortion Ban. Sounds like a viable decision. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Work/life balance is when lawyers with kids throw their childless colleagues under a bus. [Slate]

* If you’re reading transcripts of old trials and think the lawyers of yesteryear were smarter, you’re probably right. Western civilization has gotten dumber since the nineteenth century. The reason is summarized by the video after the jump….

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Michigan Continues To Make Passing The Bar Difficult

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After the July 2012 Michigan state bar exam, we noted that Michigan seemed to be tightening the screws on the people taking its bar exam. The overall pass rate for the exam was 55%, and it was only 62% for first-time test takers.

As people gear up for the July 2013 Michigan bar exam, it looks like the degree of difficulty on the test isn’t a blip, it’s a trend. The February 2013 numbers suggest that Michigan wants to keep its test hard and its test takers nervous….

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Morning Docket: 04.08.13

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J.D. = Just the Dark Roast?

* President Obama apologized to Kamala Harris after referring to her as the “best-looking attorney general in the country.” We’re guessing the First Lady was none too pleased with her husband’s behavior. [New York Times]

* If you’re unemployed (or were the victim of a recent layoff), try to keep your head up, because there’s still hope for you. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the legal sector added 2,000 jobs last month. [Am Law Daily]

* The 10 percent vacancy rate on the nation’s federal courts is unacceptable and the New York Times is ON IT. Perhaps D.C. Circuit hopeful Sri Srinivasan will have some luck at this week’s judicial confirmation hearing. [New York Times]

* Shine bright like A. Diamond: Howrey’s bankruptcy trustee is still trying to get “unfinished business” settlements from several Biglaw firms, but managed to secure funds from ALAS. [Capital Business / Washington Post]

* Contrary to what law deans tell you in the op-ed pages, if you want to work as a real lawyer, it actually matters where you go to law school. We’ll probably have more on this later today. [National Law Journal]

* Cooley Law took a hard hit in the appeal of its defamation case against Rockstar05, and now the disgruntled blogger may seek a dismissal. Score one for anonymous online speech! [Ars Technica]

* Margaret Thatcher, Great Britain’s first female Prime Minister, RIP. [CNN]

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Cooley Casserole: School Is Poised To Change Its Name Even As Preachers Make Fun Of It

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Statue of Cooley apparently letting a homeless man go to law school.

I’m sure there is an episode of Mad Men where the team merely changes the name of a product of substandard quality. Surely there are tons of real life examples where something undergoes a name change to throw consumers off the scent of failure.

In the digital age, with Google footprints being what they are, name changes are probably even more valuable. Certainly, if you are a law school that thrives off of people not fully understanding the realities of the legal job market, you’ve got to be worried about Google catching up to you.

Maybe that’s what the powers that be at Cooley Law School are thinking as they contemplate merging with a public university. Have you checked out their Google footprint recently? Today, we have a clip of a preacher taking a jab at the school on Easter Sunday.

Really, the question is: what kind of public university would want to be associated with Thomas M. Cooley Law School?

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Morning Docket: 04.03.13

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* Some Supreme Court analysts are speculating that Justice Clarence Thomas could cast a vote to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, but at this point, that’s just about as likely as him speaking during oral arguments. [Talking Points Memo]

* When a practice group laterals out of a firm en masse, you know things were probably going on behind the scenes for a while. Apparently Bingham’s securities enforcement crew was in very high demand by other Biglaw firms. [Am Law Daily]

* Hot on the heels of a merger ménage à trois, Dentons (fka SNR Denton) is already eyeing new growth possibilities across the globe. Guess they’re down with orgies now… [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* “Clients don’t hire us because of our sex. They hire us because we win.” This, from Hillary Richard, one of the female name partners of a largely all-female firm. You go girl! [DealBook / New York Times]

* Silly Cooley, a “second-tier” law school by any other name would smell as stank. Our nation’s second-best law school is considering a union with Western Michigan University. [National Law Journal]

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Quote of the Day: Cooley Law Has Admissions Standards!

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If you show us the ability to be an attorney, we’ll give you the opportunity to be an attorney. It’s not like we let anybody in the door. We don’t. But we’re much more inclusive in our admissions policy than most law schools are.

– Jeffrey L. Martlew, associate dean of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s brand spanking new Florida campus, commenting on the school’s admissions policy of inclusion, rather than elitism.

(Want to learn more about this bastion of legal education’s unique approach to law schools admissions? Come on, you know you do, so keep reading!)

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Morning Docket: 01.09.13

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* What Dewey know about this failed firm’s bankruptcy case? According to Judge Glenn’s latest order, it seems like D&L’s Chapter 11 plan is on track for confirmation in late February, unless there are objections, of course. [Am Law Daily (sub. req.)]

* The Law School Admission Council is suing California because the state’s legislature banned the practice of alerting schools when applicants had extra time to complete the LSAT. How lovely that LSAC values the ability to discriminate. [National Law Journal]

* “It’s not like we let anybody in the door. We don’t.” Apparently Cooley Law’s new Florida campus has very stringent admissions standards. Oh really? What else is required, aside from a pulse? [Tampa Tribune]

* It’s now too constitutionally risky for cops to get all frisky: a federal judge ordered that the NYPD cease its stock-and-frisk trespass stops without reasonable suspicion of actual trespass. [New York Law Journal]

* Tamara Brady, the lawyer for the accused shooter in the Aurora movie theater massacre, is setting the stage for her client’s diminished capacity defense — because even the mentally ill can buy guns. [Bloomberg]

* Pfc. Bradley Manning of WikiLeaks infamy will receive a reduced sentence if he’s convicted due to his illegal pretrial punishment, like being forced to sleep in the nude. A true hero! [Nation Now / Los Angeles Times]

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Cooley Law Kicks Homeless Man Off Its Property for Photo Op

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‘Brother, can you spare $150K so I can pay off my loan debt?’

So, remember back in August when Cooley Law School put up a bronze sculpture of the school’s namesake lecturing a homeless man at its Grand Rapids campus? At the time, we thought it might’ve been some kind of abstract art representation of Thomas M. Cooley telling a recent graduate of the second-best law school in all the land that he wouldn’t be issued a refund, despite his homelessness (and presumable joblessness).

But it seems that after successfully getting a lawsuit over the school’s employment statistics tossed out of court, the powers that be at Cooley Law decided this deceased bronzed jurist was no longer interested in lecturing the poor and downtrodden — after all, a living judge already effectively did that, by telling the world that Cooley’s job data was essentially “meaningless,” and couldn’t have been reasonably relied upon by otherwise prudent people.

And so, like any evil despot, the law school gave the poor bum one last kick in the nuts for old times’ sake….

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Quote of the Day: Sorry, Dean, Those Bar Results Are ‘For Real’

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Dean Don LeDuc

I cannot speak for the other Michigan law school deans, but for myself I cannot accept that the 2012 results validly assessed our graduates. In short, these results are not for real.

– Don LeDuc, president and dean of Thomas M. Cooley Law School, commenting on his school’s abysmal results on the July 2012 administration of the Michigan bar examination.

(If you recall, we previously discussed this summer’s Michigan bar exam results, but what other amusing things does Dean LeDuc have to say about them?)

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Test Takers Tank On The July 2012 Michigan Bar Exam

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Was one of the essay questions “design an American truck that runs on candy and rainbows but still has enough power to make a Texan feel better about his small penis”? Because that would be a hard question. And it would explain the abysmal bar passage rate achieved by test takers on the July 2012 Michigan bar exam.

The people who took the Michigan bar exam passed at a rate as if all of them went to Cooley. Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but it was still pretty bad. The bar passage rate for the state was 55 percent. Tipsters and commenters contend that those ridiculous numbers are due to a change in scoring the essays, but the Michigan Bar hasn’t released an official reason for the low rates.

Hell, maybe they want it this way. One way of slowing the saturation of the legal market is to make it a harder market to enter.

Let’s take a look at a school-by-school breakdown…

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