Law Schools

Cooley Law School Asks Court To Prevent ABA From Releasing Letter About Its Noncompliance With Accreditation Standard

Apparently the law school is completely unfamiliar with the Streisand effect.

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The American Bar Association has been on a tear lately, repeatedly cracking down on law schools that admit students who are unable to pass the bar exam after graduation. The latest schools to have faced the ABA’s wrath include Florida Coastal School of Law and Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, which were found to be “significantly out of compliance” with accreditation standards, and Thomas Jefferson School of Law, which was put on probation for being out of compliance with numerous important accreditation standards.

On November 13, 2017, the same day that Thomas Jefferson learned its fate, the ABA notified another law school — the Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, colloquially known as the Thomas M. Cooley Law School — that it was out of compliance with at least one accreditation standard, and that a public letter would be published online within 24 hours. Unlike every other law school in the country that has been publicly censured by the ABA, Cooley Law has refused to accept the hand it had been dealt. What the school decided to do will blow your mind.

Apparently completely unfamiliar with the Streisand effect, Cooley Law filed a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction with the Eastern District of Michigan in an attempt to prevent the ABA from publishing the letter online.

Why would the law school do such a thing? From Cooley Law’s brief in support:

It is mid-November, the heart of the law school application period. LSAT scores were just released to the next incoming class of students and the December LSAT is less than three weeks away. The irreparable reputational harm to Cooley which would result from the ABA publishing and disseminating the Letter to the public now is immense. Thousands of students will be making their decisions on where to attend before the February 8, 2018 deadline for Cooley to provide the additional information requested by the ABA and before any actual “adverse action” decision is made. Cooley risks losing scores of potential students not because of an actual final “adverse action” taken by the ABA, but because of the potential for adverse action two years down the road which the ABA has given Cooley an open invitation to rectify. Put simply, publishing and disseminating the Letter now creates immediate reputational harm with immediate negative consequences which cannot be undone by a later judgment in Cooley’s favor on the merits. A court cannot order law students to retroactively reconsider their decision not to attend Cooley.

Good lord, this is bold. Cooley Law is asking a federal judge to enjoin the ABA from publishing vital information that might help prospective students make an informed decision about whether or not it would be prudent for them to attend the law school. We would expect nothing less from a law school that once published its own rankings and declared itself the second best law school in the country. (For what it’s worth, the likelihood that many Cooley applicants would have seen the letter that the school so desperately wants to hide isn’t very high, as it’s evident that those who still choose to apply to Cooley in the first place haven’t thoroughly researched the school — and if they have, they don’t care about the fact that many of its graduates have trouble when it comes to passing the bar and finding full-time, long-term employment as lawyers.)

Putting aside the fact that this motion has been filed for what seems to be a rather reprehensible reason to those interested in consumer protection, this is so well-argued that Cooley could actually stand a chance to succeed. The motion, which was turned around by Conor T. Fitzpatrick and Michael P. Coakley of Miller Canfield in only a day, contends that the ABA doesn’t have the authority to publish and disseminate the letter under the very federal regulation the ABA cites as granting the organization the power to do so.

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[T]he Letter informed Cooley that the ABA intended to publish and disseminate the Letter pursuant to “34 C.F.R. § 602.26” within 24 hours.

But 34 C.F.R. § 602.26 gives the ABA no such authority. The regulation
cited by the ABA authorizes accrediting agencies like the ABA to publish “final decision[s]… to take” “adverse actions” such as placing an institution’s accreditation on probation or suspending or revoking the accreditation. Defendant’s Letter contains no such “final decision” to take such “adverse action.” Indeed, far from representing a a “final decision” to take “adverse action,” the Letter explicitly only says the ABA will take “adverse action if [Cooley] fails to bring itself into compliance within two years.”

Later on in the motion, Cooley argues that the ABA’s letter merely threatens “adverse action,” but does not specifically report it, and thus, the letter is not reportable under 34 C.F.R. § 602.26. If Cooley were to win this motion, it would be a serious blow to those who support law school transparency in all of its forms, and a major boon to law schools that wish to hide their flaws behind closed doors.

We will be waiting with bated breath to see if Cooley Law is successful in its attempts to stop the ABA from doing its job of keeping prospective law students informed — and you should be too. This would be a considerable step backwards.

(Flip to the next page to see Cooley Law’s complaint against the ABA and its motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.)

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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