The disclaimer below is in response to the frivolous SLAPP lawsuit intended to intimidate and silence free speech filed against this site and its creator by the morally bankrupt institutional hypocrite that is the Thomas M. Cooley Law School which maintains that it has integrity and ethics at its core but believes it can abuse the legal system with a SLAPP suit lending further credence to the notion that it does not in fact believe in the law or the first amendment rights it "teaches". Furthermore the brilliant Cooley folk like Jimbo Thelen and Sir Don Leducky and its lawyers at Miller Canfield (who are not Cooley lawyers by the way- a telling fact), who demonstrably have no professional integrity or respect for the judicial system and the law itself by the mere filing of this outrageous SLAPP lawsuit, clearly have never heard of the "Striesand Effect" which is likely to soon become known as the "Cooley Effect". Congrats for shining the spotlight on your questionable institutional business practices Cooley- now perhaps outside the legal community your average layperson will now know of "Cooley Law School" and the irreperable stigma that is attached to the Cooley brand name that will haunt its students and grads for a lifetime.
SLAPP Suits
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP
Striesand Effect soon to become known as the "Cooley Effect"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Striesand_effect
Dear all,
I believe I was very clear throughout my dated blog post below that I was expressing my personal opinion. I would analogize my entire post reflecting my personal experience and personal views of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School to watching a movie on a Friday night then publishing online statements asserting that it was a poor investment of time, money, and certainly not worthwhile- to boycott the movie and go ahead and watch that other movie that released the same Friday or any other movie for that matter. Do motion picture producers go out and publicly file lawsuits against each and every one who trashes their film? Let’s make the analysis more relevant and assume I flatter myself and liken my blog post to a giant public platform to express my views and opinions. Will Michael Bay go out and sue Roger Ebert, who is arguably one of the biggest critics in America, for trashing his movie?
As for distorted employment data, I have previously acknowledged that this is not a problem that is confined to Cooley alone. The ABA regulation of school reported employment data has been widely criticized by commentators, scambloggers, law professors, in addition to industry experts and analysts as being misleading. Common grounds for criticism include the idea of self-reported employment data by the law schools and notable deficiencies in the reporting in terms of not disclosing overall response rates and either having a breakdown or reflecting employment that actually requires a law degree. Since I concur with the opinions of these critics and publicize it, will this opinion and view subject me to another 200 lawsuits filed by each and every ABA approved law school?
I would like to make it clear that I never once addressed the quality of the education provided at Cooley but grounded my opinion based on its poor reputation as a fourth tier school, high attrition rates, unfriendly administrative policies, and most reprehensible of all, the school naming itself as the second best law school in the United States of America ahead of such notables such as: Yale, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, UofM, Chicago etc. In fact I would consider their subjective self-proclaimed and advertised ranking as the second best law school equally if not more “misleading” to the general public than my own publicized personal subjective opinion on Cooley not being a good option for law school. I’ll go out on a limb and speculate that my “misleading” opinions would bear slightly more weight given that the most authoritative ranking of law schools published by the US News ranks Cooley closer to the bottom of the 200 schools as opposed to the top two law schools in the country.
The assertion by Thomas M. Cooley of its status as the second best law school in America is as ludicrous as asserting that I am the second smartest man in America. It would invite the type of backlash that Cooley experiences everywhere throughout the nation. Yet I would not go out and sue someone who has a different opinion, or in the extreme scenario, publicly lambasts me for my declaration and calls me the dumbest man in America.
I will also point out that I never made any allegations with respect to loan fraud or other specific factual claims regarding the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. I simply expressed my experience, views, opinions, and said that I would not recommend the school to anyone. Since I love use analogies (as I used several times in my disputed blog post to insult Cooley), this is similar to using a product then posting a negative review online telling everyone to beware and choose one of the competitors. Do you think McDonalds would come sue me if I said their Big Mac was a load of crap and that everyone should spend their money on a Whopper or virtually any other hamburger on the market, or none at all if that was their only other option?
Finally, I would like to add that Cooley has not attempted to contact me even once, either through e-mail or through a blog comment on this post. If they had done so as they claim in James B. Thelan's sworn affidavit as attached to the Complaint, or perhaps even are willing to retract their lawsuit at this early stage, I would consider removing this post altogether. In terms of damages I’m not sure of the basis for Cooley’s request for relief in the amount of $25,000, let alone the special damages and/or actual malice that must be proven in order to successfully sue someone for defamation. I am not technologically savvy and any Joe Schmoe or "John Doe" for that matter who is disgruntled about their experience and wants to inform others of essentially a “buyer beware” message can set up a site in less than 5 minutes to publicize his views. Truthfully, I almost forgot about my Weebly blog site until I received an e-mail from a journalist that hit my blackberry informing me that a lawsuit has been directed towards my website. Up until now this blog has had an average of under 30 hits a day for the past few months. Most of the users seem to actually ATTEND COOLEY THEMSELVES, so the damage and defamation would be similar to telling the Detroit Lions they suck. Is a $50,000 lawsuit necessary to vindicate my “damage” to Cooley by expressing my personal opinions and views regarding it? The fact they have taken the time to take such a big step instead of simply ignoring and dismissing sites as mine as ridiculous does say a lot. My two-bit site should be hardly anything that would publicly defame and damage a world-class institution like the Thomas M. Cooley Law School which can boast of being the second best law school in the country that produces the greatest number of lawyers and is the world’s LEADER in top educational institutions.
Sincerely,
Rockstar05
SAVE YOURSELF: ANYONE CONSIDERING TO ATTEND THE “PRESTIGIOUS” THOMAS M. COOLEY LAW SCHOOL- EXPOSING THE THOMAS M. COOLEY LAW SCHOOL SCAM
Consider this a PUBLIC SERVICE FOR ANYONE CONSIDERING THOMAS M. COOLEY LAW SCHOOL. In fact, I am probably doing YOU THE BIGGEST FAVOR OF YOUR LIFE by raising public awareness and offering you this advice….all free of charge! As a prior student who was fortunate enough to GET OUT OF COOLEY let me lay a SMACKDOWN on this TTTT (Third Tier Toilet Trash) school.
Sorry to say there are little to no job prospects graduating from this school. Most graduates or people planning to attend do not have a shot in hell of actually practicing law, unless they either have GUARANTEED EMPLOYMENT, or believe that hanging a shingle in a dingy rented office post-graduation will provide the returns necessary to justify the 50k cost per year for attendance at this joke of a law school.
Cooley is without a doubt one of the three worst law schools in the United States. Given that there are 193 ABA Approved Law Schools, this is QUITE AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. In addition to the horrendous ranking of this commode, Cooley is also a “punching bag” favorite in legal forums and ridiculed and considered THE BIGGEST JOKE of all law schools amongst other law students and the legal community at large. There are multiple reasons for this:
1) AN OPEN DOOR POLICY- They accept just about anybody. Go write the LSAT without studying, send Cooley a free application with no recent Felony convictions, and YOU WILL GET ACCEPTED.
2) ATTRITION RATE AND ADMINISTRATIVE POLICIES- The first year attrition rate is about 26%. On your WAY OUT Cooley thanks you for your first year tuition payment, now have a nice life!
3) THE “COOLEY RANKINGS”- Contrary to the US NEWS that ranks the school amongst the fourth-tier trash of America, Cooley begs to differ as they publish their own “Cooley Rankings” on their website ranking it as the SECOND BEST school in America!
4) THE COOLEY “BUSINESS SCHOOL” IS A DIPLOMA MILL- A day and evening program, approximately 84% of enrolment on a part-time basis, a full-time weekend law program….basically creating ANY WAY you can think of to earn a degree from their school [EXCEPT AN ONLINE J.D. PROGRAM-an honor that until this point I believe only Florida Coastal has achieved (still awaiting a formal announcement from Thomas M. Cooley regarding a new online program)].
5) THE NON-EMPLOYMENT OF ITS GRADS- I can say I knew no one who 1) was about to graduate and had found any employment prior to graduation OR 2) anyone who had graduated and eventually found a job
I will elaborate and address each of these in order, backed by statistics and facts, painting a real picture of what Cooley really is, and what your career prospects will likely be post-Cooley.
I. AN “OPEN DOOR POLICY”
From Top Law Schools:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/thomas-cooley-school-of-law.html
“…with an acceptance rate of nearly 80%, admissions at Cooley are hardly selective – last year, 4,570 out of 5,775 received acceptance letters. The admissions office is very forthcoming about its use of an index to streamline their decision-making process: a candidate is scored via the formula (LSDAS GPA*15) + LSAT. The full-time JD class of 2012’s middle 50th percentile LSAT scores ranged from 146-152, with a median of 148; Cooley’s official policy is to accept only the applicant’s highest LSAT score. LSDAS GPA scores varied from a 25th percentile of 2.80 to a 75th of 3.42. The part-time program was less competitive with an LSAT range of 143 to 149, with a median of 145. Its GPA range was 2.58 to 3.34, with a median of 2.97.”
What the fuck???? Are these stats real you might ask yourself? 4570 acceptance letters? It’s a shame that the American Bar Association (ABA) doesn’t require GPA or LSAT minimums scores for law schools. Generally speaking someone with an LSAT score or GPA that low should NOT be attending law school. However, there are some people who just do not do well on standardized tests and may have been more focused on partying and state football in their undergrad years. An LSAT score likely DOES NOT accurately reflect on one’s intelligence or is a good indicator or predictor of law school performance or ability to practice law. THAT BEING SAID, someone who scores lower than a 145 is still probably not anyone you would want representing you or adding prestige to your law school. OK, so I guess Cooley does give a SELECT FEW an opportunity to attempt law school that are potentially more worthy of law school and the profession than those in more prestigious law schools with higher entrance credentials. I will give Cooley credit on this point, and this point alone.
Let’s face it is, law school is very elitist. Any school that strips the profession of the elitism is bound to get ragged on. Thomas M. Cooley is the biggest offender. By defying this law school norm they have taken a huge beating to their reputation. Also, it is very difficult for firms to take a law school like this which accepts some students with absolutely pathetic entrance credentials very seriously.
Don’t worry…. you WILL GET ACCEPTED…but that should not be your biggest concern if you read on. If you get rejected by this school you should probably a) either kill yourself or b) settle for sweeping the hallways at a REAL LAW SCHOOL.
II. ATTRITION RATE & ADMINISTRATIVE POLICIES
From Top Law Schools
“The curve at Cooley is very tough - so much so that 22.4% of 1Ls and 14.5% of 2Ls either choose to leave or flunk out. Even 3Ls are not safe, as 14 of them were forced to leave last year.”
http://www.top-law-schools.com/thomas-cooley-school-of-law.html
“I would suggest adding another category “Attrition rate” where Cooley would surely be number “1″ : 1st Year – 26%; 2nd Year – 10.4%. Cooley wants people to believe that it can accept a host of people with the worst statistics (independent indicators) and come out thinking they are a top law school.”
http://politicalcartel.org/2010/03/03/thomas-cooley-law-school-is-an-embarrassment/
What makes Cooley so bad is not the fact that it is a horrible fourth-tier school, but the fact that it is a fourth ranked school that acts like it is 1st tier school. The window is absolutely HUGE to get in but STAYING IN is RIDICULOUSLY HARD….not to mention the BULLSHIT ADMINISTRATIVE POLICIES at Cooley which are UNHEARD OF AT REAL LAW SCHOOLS:
- The GPA grading curve is amongst the worst in the country. Making it virtually IMPOSSIBLE TO TRANSFER OUT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_school_GPA_curves
The above website lists the law school GPA curve at 2.00-2.40. This GPA at any other school would put you at the DEAD BOTTOM of the class and probably suggest that you did not open a book all term. For Cooley you would still need to work for this disgusting GPA. Therefore DON’T EXPECT YOUR GRADES AT COOLEY to be attractive to any law schools in your goals to transfer out if that’s your reason for attending.
Here is a typical admission office response to your transfer application “Not only did you attend the worst law school in the country but say what????!!!!! You couldn’t even get a 3.0 at that POS law school?”, with the individual immediately proceeding to throw your transfer application (which can cost upward of $100 per school) in the trash bin, next to all the other poor Cooley students trying to get out.
They don’t give a shit that a 3.0 or above at this shitty school would put you in the top 25% of your class. The only marks that will get you to transfer out or will be respectable to any employer coming outta Cooley are A’s….and unfortunately out of 100 people in your class maybe only 7-9 will get them! Oh and there are no +’s at this school either….just the letter or a minus. I wonder what the rationale behind not having a “+” score in grading but having a “-“score could be? Good luck getting good grades at this school.
All it takes is a little bit of research to establish that at the majority of other better ranked law schools, a 3.0 is a mediocre mark whereas that is an all-star mark at Cooley. So hey, you might be “the shit” at Cooley…but how does this all play out in reality??? Employers not familiar with Cooley’s grading policies will see this and be like “WHATTT ARE U SERIOUS THIS KID IS A JOKE, 2.85 FROM COOLEY AND HE WANTS TO WORK HERE???” You will be forced to put your class rank instead of your GPA on your resume out of fear of embarrassment or going directly into the trash.
This will also limit your applications as most law jobs that accept applications through their website ask you for your GPA, NOT YOUR CLASS RANK. In other words, this school makes sure your fucked. Kind of works against you don’t you think? You pay all this money just to have your own school limit your potential? But hey this is THOMAS COOLEY…nothing really makes sense here.
Believe it or not a SEXY 3.0 will put you on the Dean’s List if you got it for the term and the Honor Roll if your cumulative is a 3.0 or above. Try explaining that to an employer…how your mediocre GPA sounding number put you on the honor roll at a bullshit school???!!!!
- Part time and full time students are ranked together
Yep, so when you see your class rank out of 1000 students and think HEY I know people from all the sections in 1L…add em all up and there is no more than 300 people, this should explain why there are such a large number of students ranked. Also from the link below we can see that 84% of the students are part time students:
http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2010/03/smoldering-steaming-pile-of-excrement.html#links
The website above also offers a realistic picture at the very top of what your career prospects will look like. So that rich spoiled son of a bitch who was too stupid to get in anywhere else can afford to take 1-2 classes a term and live off daddy’s money or a trust fund and just coast through life can FOCUS ALL HIS EFFORTS ON TWO CLASSES and get straight A’s while simultaneously degrading your legitimate efforts at 5 courses to a mediocre class rank!!!! Such are the “just” and “ethical” policies of the prestigious Tom Cooley Law Skool.
- Up to two-three weeks prior to the beginning of the term one may not add or change courses
So your only option if you want to change professors or courses when the year starts is to DROP. This is HARDLY the type of policies you would expect at the LARGEST LAW SCHOOL IN THE COUNTRY with by far the most students and largest selection of courses and sections for those courses. This policy is in effect to make sure it takes you longer and is more difficult to obtain a degree from this poor excuse of a law school
- IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO GRADUATE ON TIME
This school requires a mandatory externship that firms take as free labor then byebye! Cooley has four campuses that supply graduates endlessly, do you really think firms give a shit? Additionally after your core required courses in later semesters almost ALL courses are worth only 2 credits…meaning you will have to stack up 6-7 classes a term to graduate without spending longer at Cooley than you want to. This is clearly not realistic.
- In some cases students must wait SEVEN WEEKS FOR THEIR MARKS!!
Marks are due on the fourth Monday of the following term plus add the three weeks off! Further proof the professors get paid to do fuck all. To make matters worse this joke of a law school couldn’t even follow through on this promise for the Fall 2010 marks, with some marks taking an additional 48 hours past the deadline to be posted. Guess the school allots additional time for the professors to get trashed over the holidays and celebrate their high paid salaries all the while laughing at the students dumb enough to attend this waste site.
- Cooley does NOT let you pick your own courses
Other law schools allow a lot of latitude in choosing courses and specializing. Not Cooley- your first three terms are PRE-SET and almost 2/3 of your entire degree is composed of REQUIRED COURSES. So much for taking the courses you want to. But hell, COOLEY KNOWS BEST. After all, they did build this STELLAR REPUTATION in the legal community that keeps employers RACING TO EMPLOY COOLEY GRADS.
- Exams are all closed book
Other schools have open-book exams, meaning you can bring your textbooks and ANY NOTES you please. Cooley reinforces its reputation as a hard-core rigorous elite law school by not allowing this under the pretext that “hey, the bar exam is not open book”. Correct Cooley, I’ll give you that. But what about fucking courses like Tax which are not tested at all on the bar. How do you justify that? Just trying to keep your bar passage rates up and keep your accreditation I assume. Further proof the faculty, staff, executive committee, and administration are all in on the business model described beow and that the students are morons for putting up with this shit. How do you expect someone who is not well versed in tax (which is REQUIRED at this school by the way) to memorize all of that? I have a business background so that is just as good as giving me a 4.0 by closing the books for other students….but boy do I feel bad for the people who find tax challenging. Also in real life, what tax lawyer is not allowed to use a handbook in conducting their practice? Thomas Cooley holds itself out as a PRACTICAL law school, how do you justify this policy then?
- There is no Spring Break
Hey other schools get breaks. Cooley? NO WAY- hey this is a top school, we don’t take breaks. You want the BigLaw experience right? Well the hard work ethic and no-life part you will DEFINITELY GET…in fact this is the closest you will ever get to the BigLaw experience with a degree from this shithole.
- There is no reading week prior to exams
That’s right. You go straight from Week 14 of classes to Week 15 of exams. Class on Friday where you are REQUIRED TO ATTEND and exam on Monday. No room to breathe. You are still studying and doing readings to be prepared for class so you don’t get verbally annihilated by your professor in front of the class and you must simultaneously balance studying for your finals while completing your weekly course readings. Exactly what you’d expect from a fourth-tier school right? Other law school students at different schools would scream over policies such as these.
- All Exams Must be Completed in one week
Most exams are so CRAMMED IN so you will be at the library until 4am having panic attacks a few weeks before exams and entering cardiac arrest each night before an exam. Yessir, it is not uncommon for most 1L students taking 5 courses to write all 5 in 5 days. Pretty crazy don’t you think? Considering the exams are all worth 100% that would probably give anyone a panic attack. Exam schedules are a nightmare to anyone who attends this school. You will be lucky if you are taking 5 exams in 6 days….or 4 exams in 5 days. At other law schools this is unheard of!
- Unfriendly transfer policies
At this garbage school they frequently encourage students NOT to take a full course load. They encourage taking 3-4 classes a term. But seeing as schools like to see 24-30 credits over your first year (two semesters) to transfer, by taking fewer courses it will likely take 3-4 semesters before you reach this number of credits making it IMPOSSIBLE to transfer! NO SCHOOL WILL TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY.
Also, the internet is flooded with reports of the admin offices at Cooley screwing them over. Examples are not sending required items by the deadline required at other schools and sending letters saying students are in bad standing when in fact they are not. Good luck getting into a different school when your own school is going out of its way to fuck you over.
III. THE COOLEY RANKINGS
HEY GUESS WHAT????? DID YOU KNOW THAT ALMOST 5000 STUDENTS GOT ACCEPTED INTO THE SECOND BEST LAW SCHOOL IN THE STATES???? ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS APPLY….80% OF APPLICATIONS WERE ACCEPTED!!!!
Who knew right? In its NEW RANKINGS, Cooley ranks itself the 2nd best school in the United States, RIGHT AFTER HARVARD. WOW, are you surprised? FUCK, I CANT BELIEVE I TRANSFERRED OUT OF THE SECOND BEST LAW SCHOOL IN AMERICA!!! Bet you didn’t think that a 143 on the LSAT and a 2.6 GPA (low ranges from their open door policy from above) from undergrad would get you into the second best law school in the country!!!
THE LINK TO THE SHAM:
http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/overall2010.html
HERE ARE SOME TIPS FOR YOU UNDERGRADS WANTING TO GET INTO THE 2ND BEST SCHOOL IN THE COUNTRY. DO the following and make your parents PROUD BY getting accepted into the SECOND BEST LAW SCHOOL IN THE COUNTRY:
1) Do not attend class, ever.
2) Blow all your money on women and booze! Try developing an addiction to crack while you are at it….if you can pull it all off and get into the best law school with the best career prospects and still have it all, why not?? Charlie Sheen does it right? He’s the highest paid actor on TV and damn is he cool…..all that money and the finest women!!!
3) Drink every night, literally every night during undergrad.
4) Midterm exam tomorrow? Make sure you drink even more the night before and attend the exam with a hangover. Throw in some unprotected drunken sex just to be even more reckless….also you will have something to think about while drawing doodles on your midterm exam the next day.
5) Literally do nothing for the LSAT. Walk in and shade in any letter you want. Go “A,B,C,D” then start from the beginning for the entire 100 question multiple choice exam. This is to ensure you don’t get any freebees by using any decent strategy such as shading in “B” for all responses (you may actually receive a 146 on the LSAT…and who wants to work harder than you should to get into the second best law school in the country right????)
THIS IS THE MOST PATHETIC THING I HAVE SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!! REPREHENSIBLE AT SEVERAL LEVELS. YOU WILL LEARN ABOUT MISREPRESENTATION AND LIABILITY FOR RECKLESS REPORTING IN YOUR TORTS CLASS. I am shocked and dumbfounded the school has not been sued for its misrepresentation on its website as the SECOND BEST LAW SCHOOL IN THE NATION BEHIND HARVARD.
Proof that the executive committee and administration at this school does not have a shred of integrity or moral decency. We should ask them if they would send their kids to the prestigious Thomas M. Cooley Law School! I do not know how they can sleep at night publishing this shit. The audacity of these people just leaves me speechless. Whoever is responsible for this atrocity and public deception should be executed IMMEDIATELY.
In addition to being addressed and ridiculed in several law school forums as well as legal professional communities the “Cooley Rankings” are also referenced to in the following:
1) The Top Law Schools website
The Cooley Rankings
Each year, Judge Thomas E. Brennen (who, by pure coincidence, happens to be dean of Cooley Law School) publishes his own rankings in response to the USNWR, which he sees as flawed. Also by pure coincidence, Cooley tends to land in the top 20 law schools in the country in these rankings, ahead of notables such as Duke, UC Berkeley, and Stanford. These rankings are often critiqued as being highly biased due to the importance they place on factors such as student body size (a third coincidence: Cooley is the nation’s largest law school) and law library square footage. Though the USWNR rankings have received their fair share of criticism over the years, and alternative rankings (such as the Leiter report) can often be credible alternatives, Judge Brennen’s rankings are generally considered (at best) to be little more than a marketing tool for Cooley Law.
http://www.top-law-schools.com/thomas-cooley-school-of-law.html
2) This intelligent Blogger who devoted an ENTIRE PAGE to the ranking system
http://politicalcartel.org/2010/03/03/thomas-cooley-law-school-is-an-embarrassment/
3) Third Tier Reality
http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2010/03/smoldering-steaming-pile-of-excrement.html#links
4) Wikipedia
“In the twelfth edition of Judging the Law Schools, a publication authored by Cooley Law, Cooley ranks itself second (above law schools such as Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, University of Chicago Law School, and Duke University School of Law). The ranking system advocated by the school has come under heavy criticism for the methodology used to determine placement. The school maintains that judging a legal education by what caliber of students enter will not adequately address the quality of lawyers which come out. However, the Cooley ranking system has been criticized for never actually mathematically addressing this issue. Instead, a host of less determinative criteria, like volumes in library, total applications, total law school square footage, total minority faculty (notably ignoring ratio), total enrollment, total titles in library, and total serial subscriptions.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M._Cooley_Law_School
I find it EXTREMELY FUNNY AND WEIRD THAT investors in the stock market require audited financial statements before investing in companies that must be validated and attested to by public accountants working long hours to verify the internal data meanwhile no one cares to audit or check these self-reported statistics from law schools that generate BILLIONS IN REVENUE EACH YEAR! HOW DO U THINK THE PRICE OF STOCKS ARE MEASURED? THE PRESENT VALUE OF FUTURE RETURNS. THE PRICE IS REFLECTIVE OF THE EARNINGS POTENTIAL OF THE STOCK. If the stock market provides shitty returns, negative returns, or NO returns the stock will become less desirable, and no one will buy till it shrivels up and the company dissolves! The average investor lets say has 10-20k invested in stocks. What about the young, innocent, and ambitious law school student who is about to invest 3 years of his life including 150k+ in non-dischargeable debt into a law degree that could have NO RETURN in this shitty job market????!!! There is no one to audit or verify where all this money is going, or to verify there will be any return at all.
IV. COOLEY BUSINESS SCHOOL- A.K.A “DEGREE MILL”
“… in the most recent USNWR rankings, the school received a peer-review score of 1.4, and a lawyers/judges-review score of 1.8 (both out of 5). The school also has one of the highest student-to-faculty ratios in the country, at 23.5. This last statistic contributes to the idea of Cooley as a “degree mill”.
Cooley is priced at $28,740 per year. The school also offers generous LSAT-based scholarships – any candidate who scores 163+ is eligible for a 100% honors scholarship, with correspondingly lower dollar amounts offered for lower scores. Michigan residents are automatically eligible to receive a 10% increase on an honors scholarship.
http://www.top-law-schools.com/thomas-cooley-school-of-law.html
I checked the Cooley website as I was ABSOLUTELY SURE regular tuition is NOT that low and found this:
http://www.cooley.edu/overview/tuition.html
OUCH. $28,740…damn so I was wrong….right? NOPE I dug a little further (in fact just clicked on a link on the same page) to uncover this:
http://www.cooley.edu/prospective/expenses.html
Wait…..and YES I AM RIGHT!!! 32k in tuition alone ….THIRTY TWO THOUSAND $$$ IS ALL YOU NEED TO ATTEND THE SECOND BEST LAW SCHOOL IN THE COUNTRY!!! Why go to those 40k+ top ranked law schools called Stanford and Yale when you can go this prestigious institute of higher learning??
Nice deceit once again. Just 4k. When your students receive their tuition bill and it is too late to turn back I am sure they won’t figure $4000 which is 1/7 of the entire advertised tuition is that big of a deal.
Plus you are getting a FIRST RATE tuition….you do realize it is a PRIVILEGE to attend Cooley right? There are 20% of the other original applicants who would KILL TO BE IN YOUR POSITION. Way to prey on the trusting yet less-than-smart candidates for your prestigious law schools you fucking bloodsuckers!
So this is more of a summary of the whole “open door” policy and attrition rate combination. This private law school is essentially a multi-million dollar business. In fact, in Lansing Michigan where the school is located they are the HIGHEST TAXPAYER….I’m sure the City of Lansing would do ANYTHING for this disgusting mess. HERE IS HOW IT WORKS IN LAYMANS TERMS IN CASE YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THE DYNAMICS:
- Cooley take lotsa students, any student with $$, Cooley take
- Cooley fail out lotta students
- BUT Cooley keep first year money, become more rich
- By flunking out dumber of dumb students; Cooley only keep smarter ones
- half “smarter” students either get out 2 better law school
- other half stay at Cooley and improve Cooleys bar passage rate
- This make Cooley look good
- Cooley get 2 keep its ABA accreditation and still operate as an ABA law school to make more $$
- Cooley bar pass rate is semi-decent not reflective of the horrible reputation and the horrible school it really is because they kick out all dumber suckers that accept admission
- This keep Cooley look good and as lucrative investment to new gullable kiddies
- Cooley lure more kids and get more money
- More, more, money
The whole process is just sickening. Most of these students should not have been in law school in the first place. Sure Cooley, you are giving them a shot….but at what cost? Those without scholarships will waste a year of their life at your school and total estimated expenses of 48K according to your site!!! What says being ethical or having integrity than taking 50k from a poor debt-ridden kid who doesn’t have a shot in hell at practicing law??? The website above provides the 2010-2011 figures….so it is likely that COSTS HAVE ONLY GONE UP to attend this prestigious “business school”. Congrats you criminals, you have accomplished robbery!
100% scholarships to attract students to give your school more credibility and tuition-paying dumbasses who have nowhere else to go in addition to the caveman breakdown above….GREAT BUSINESS MODEL!!! If John Dillinger were alive he would probably quit robbing banks and just decide to run Thomas M. Cooley Law School….seeing as both are essentially same things….only difference is that no one is going after these criminals over at Cooley!!!!
V. THE NON-EMPLOYMENT OF COOLEY GRADS
Yes you read it right. Not unemployment, not under-employment, NON-EMPLOYMENT.
From: TOP LAW SCHOOLS:
Life After Graduation
Like many who earn degrees from Tier 4 schools, Cooley graduates do not tend to finish school with job offers falling into their laps, especially after the recent economic downturn. Graduates are prepared for the Michigan bar only slightly worse than at other schools, passing at a rate of 80%, compared with the state average of 82%. Graduates do not fare well on other bar exams, however. Other popular choices were New York (28 percentage points below average), Illinois (18 below), and California (44 below). Nine months after graduation, only 77.8% of Cooley alumni responding to a school survey have managed to find employment – meaning nearly a quarter remains unemployed; this statistic does not factor in the number of graduates responding to the school’s employment survey, so the real employment figures may be lower. The majority of graduates remain in Michigan to practice law, and go into the private sector – thus putting to good use the hard skills Cooley considers so important.
I am SURPRISED that Cooley publishes its private sector starting salary for at 51k on their site....which seems relatively honest in comparison to publishing their own rankings putting them at the top of the law school rankings. Let me also remind you that PRIVATE PRACTICE IS GENERALLY THE BEST PAYING…..WOW SO YOU CAN PAY 50K/YEAR FOR THREE YEARS FOR A TOTAL OF 150K TO HAVE AN AVERAGE STARTING SALARY OF 50K???? WHAT AN AMAZING INVESTMENT!!! I was making more than that figure PRIOR to attending law school. Also, Cooley's response rate is ridiculously low so it is likely that grads working at McDonalds and Walmart are not responding or the average salary of a "grad" would be much much lower...but hey even they are still employed RIGHT?? All it took was thousands upon thousands of dollars and years of time, effort, and hard-work.
DO NOT ATTEND THIS SCHOOL unless you have guaranteed employment, such as through family or very close friends. Beware the current job market- a job that is promised to you prior to law school may NOT BE THERE after three years through no fault of the promisor.
The value of a Cooley J.D. is virtually worthless. Additionally, the opportunities of even being UNDER-EMPLOYED are very slim. Any diligent employer would be wary of hiring someone for under $15 an hour knowing that individual is being severely under-employed for their “training” as a lawyer. Nothing screams FLIGHT RISK like a J.D. of Law making $11.50. You are kidding yourself and must not take either yourself or the possibility of actually practicing law for a firm very seriously at all if you plan on attending this institution.
THE WORST OF THE LOT are people who come from all over the US come to Cooley to get a law degree. This include LOTS of people from California, Illinois, and the good state of New York. I would go as far to say that approximately 70% of the students at Cooley’s main Lansing campus are from out of state. If you ever are unfortunate enough to ever be in Lansing, Michigan and take a stroll around you will see that virtually EVERY license plate you see in the downtown area immediately surrounding Cooley is filled with out of state plates. These are the “rejects” from almost each and every state who could not get into law school in their own state so all the rejects seek refuge from the harsh reality that they should not be practicing law at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School….which SLOGAN SHOULD BE “WHERE DEGENERATES UNITE” . The idea for these ass-clowns is to attend out of state with the intention of taking their prized Cooley J.D. back to their home state, write the bar, and find employment. I need to ask these people, ARE YOU RETARDED? When mediocre law schools in your own state are having trouble finding jobs for their grads or even paid internships do you think your out of state TTTT degree from one of the worst schools in the country will do any better? NO. NYLS grads are finding things tough and Touro grads literally can’t do shit in New York…you think a TTTT Cooley degree in one of the most saturated markets in America will do you any good at all??? If you think any differently you are in denial. You probably won’t show me your face in four years post-graduation when reality kicks in and all my warnings come true in so I can tell you I TOLD YOU SO.
FINAL WORDS
If you are attending due to a scholarship or affordable tuition, or even a FREE EDUCATION I would not attend here. When applying to firms after graduation would you really say in an interview (assuming you actually get one), “ya they gave me a 100% scholarship, I really am a genius and scored over a 163 on the LSAT”???? Do you think the employer could or will verify any of these statistics to give you any credibility???? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Also the Cooley name is just toxic in the legal community, if they see Cooley anywhere on an app it is likely it is going straight into the garbage. I would not be surprised if partners or hiring managers advise their secretary, HR person, or whoever is screening applications to just dump all the Cooley apps in the trash bin! If you are like me, use your better marks that got you a scholarship for at Cooley and pay full tuition at reputable regional T1 or T2 school….you will not regret it!!
If you are attending with the intention of transferring out ASAP please rethink this option. Yes, top students DO TRANSFER OUT. However, it seems every student enters thinking they will be a part of these top students. If you think you will transfer and be in the top 20% of a class, keep in mind that everyone else is thinking that too….that means 80% of students who think this way will be disappointed. Law school is NOT LIKE UNDERGRAD….in fact it makes undergrad look like a joke! If you didn’t apply yourself then and think you will step it up now….based on no prior law school performance HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY GAUGE your future law school performance???? Do yourself a favor and do not attend with this mentality. In fact do not attend any law school where you would not want to graduate from…other law schools are also difficult to transfer from. However, the stigma associated with Cooley along with the NASTY GRADE CURVE discussed above will make it virtuously impossible to transfer.
If this is your ONLY OPTION to attend law school I would probably re-consider law school as a whole. Either retake the LSAT and do better or find a different career altogether. I know you would like to be a lawyer- but hell, it isn’t for all of us. If everyone could be a doctor or lawyer, don’t you think everyone would be? You want to spend years of your life that you cannot get back, likely get into 150K or more of non-dischargeable debt, for a degree with a ZERO RETURN ON INVESTMENT????!!!! LISTEN TO ME, YOU WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE BY ATTENDING THIS SCHOOL. You can work at Wal-Mart without the Cooley J.D….take my word for it. Listen to my advice, it is the best return on your investment for reading this and quite possibly the best return on investment in your life if you are considering attending the Thomas M. Cooley Law School!
RockStar05
P.S. Cooley considers almost 6000 applications a year, so I am certain that at least 8000 people a year do consider this as an option or look into it. I have done the research and experienced most of this for you, providing the lowdown and exposing one of the biggest scams in modern American history. You’re welcome.
SLAPP Suits
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP
Striesand Effect soon to become known as the "Cooley Effect"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Striesand_effect
Dear all,
I believe I was very clear throughout my dated blog post below that I was expressing my personal opinion. I would analogize my entire post reflecting my personal experience and personal views of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School to watching a movie on a Friday night then publishing online statements asserting that it was a poor investment of time, money, and certainly not worthwhile- to boycott the movie and go ahead and watch that other movie that released the same Friday or any other movie for that matter. Do motion picture producers go out and publicly file lawsuits against each and every one who trashes their film? Let’s make the analysis more relevant and assume I flatter myself and liken my blog post to a giant public platform to express my views and opinions. Will Michael Bay go out and sue Roger Ebert, who is arguably one of the biggest critics in America, for trashing his movie?
As for distorted employment data, I have previously acknowledged that this is not a problem that is confined to Cooley alone. The ABA regulation of school reported employment data has been widely criticized by commentators, scambloggers, law professors, in addition to industry experts and analysts as being misleading. Common grounds for criticism include the idea of self-reported employment data by the law schools and notable deficiencies in the reporting in terms of not disclosing overall response rates and either having a breakdown or reflecting employment that actually requires a law degree. Since I concur with the opinions of these critics and publicize it, will this opinion and view subject me to another 200 lawsuits filed by each and every ABA approved law school?
I would like to make it clear that I never once addressed the quality of the education provided at Cooley but grounded my opinion based on its poor reputation as a fourth tier school, high attrition rates, unfriendly administrative policies, and most reprehensible of all, the school naming itself as the second best law school in the United States of America ahead of such notables such as: Yale, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, UofM, Chicago etc. In fact I would consider their subjective self-proclaimed and advertised ranking as the second best law school equally if not more “misleading” to the general public than my own publicized personal subjective opinion on Cooley not being a good option for law school. I’ll go out on a limb and speculate that my “misleading” opinions would bear slightly more weight given that the most authoritative ranking of law schools published by the US News ranks Cooley closer to the bottom of the 200 schools as opposed to the top two law schools in the country.
The assertion by Thomas M. Cooley of its status as the second best law school in America is as ludicrous as asserting that I am the second smartest man in America. It would invite the type of backlash that Cooley experiences everywhere throughout the nation. Yet I would not go out and sue someone who has a different opinion, or in the extreme scenario, publicly lambasts me for my declaration and calls me the dumbest man in America.
I will also point out that I never made any allegations with respect to loan fraud or other specific factual claims regarding the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. I simply expressed my experience, views, opinions, and said that I would not recommend the school to anyone. Since I love use analogies (as I used several times in my disputed blog post to insult Cooley), this is similar to using a product then posting a negative review online telling everyone to beware and choose one of the competitors. Do you think McDonalds would come sue me if I said their Big Mac was a load of crap and that everyone should spend their money on a Whopper or virtually any other hamburger on the market, or none at all if that was their only other option?
Finally, I would like to add that Cooley has not attempted to contact me even once, either through e-mail or through a blog comment on this post. If they had done so as they claim in James B. Thelan's sworn affidavit as attached to the Complaint, or perhaps even are willing to retract their lawsuit at this early stage, I would consider removing this post altogether. In terms of damages I’m not sure of the basis for Cooley’s request for relief in the amount of $25,000, let alone the special damages and/or actual malice that must be proven in order to successfully sue someone for defamation. I am not technologically savvy and any Joe Schmoe or "John Doe" for that matter who is disgruntled about their experience and wants to inform others of essentially a “buyer beware” message can set up a site in less than 5 minutes to publicize his views. Truthfully, I almost forgot about my Weebly blog site until I received an e-mail from a journalist that hit my blackberry informing me that a lawsuit has been directed towards my website. Up until now this blog has had an average of under 30 hits a day for the past few months. Most of the users seem to actually ATTEND COOLEY THEMSELVES, so the damage and defamation would be similar to telling the Detroit Lions they suck. Is a $50,000 lawsuit necessary to vindicate my “damage” to Cooley by expressing my personal opinions and views regarding it? The fact they have taken the time to take such a big step instead of simply ignoring and dismissing sites as mine as ridiculous does say a lot. My two-bit site should be hardly anything that would publicly defame and damage a world-class institution like the Thomas M. Cooley Law School which can boast of being the second best law school in the country that produces the greatest number of lawyers and is the world’s LEADER in top educational institutions.
Sincerely,
Rockstar05
SAVE YOURSELF: ANYONE CONSIDERING TO ATTEND THE “PRESTIGIOUS” THOMAS M. COOLEY LAW SCHOOL- EXPOSING THE THOMAS M. COOLEY LAW SCHOOL SCAM
Consider this a PUBLIC SERVICE FOR ANYONE CONSIDERING THOMAS M. COOLEY LAW SCHOOL. In fact, I am probably doing YOU THE BIGGEST FAVOR OF YOUR LIFE by raising public awareness and offering you this advice….all free of charge! As a prior student who was fortunate enough to GET OUT OF COOLEY let me lay a SMACKDOWN on this TTTT (Third Tier Toilet Trash) school.
Sorry to say there are little to no job prospects graduating from this school. Most graduates or people planning to attend do not have a shot in hell of actually practicing law, unless they either have GUARANTEED EMPLOYMENT, or believe that hanging a shingle in a dingy rented office post-graduation will provide the returns necessary to justify the 50k cost per year for attendance at this joke of a law school.
Cooley is without a doubt one of the three worst law schools in the United States. Given that there are 193 ABA Approved Law Schools, this is QUITE AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. In addition to the horrendous ranking of this commode, Cooley is also a “punching bag” favorite in legal forums and ridiculed and considered THE BIGGEST JOKE of all law schools amongst other law students and the legal community at large. There are multiple reasons for this:
1) AN OPEN DOOR POLICY- They accept just about anybody. Go write the LSAT without studying, send Cooley a free application with no recent Felony convictions, and YOU WILL GET ACCEPTED.
2) ATTRITION RATE AND ADMINISTRATIVE POLICIES- The first year attrition rate is about 26%. On your WAY OUT Cooley thanks you for your first year tuition payment, now have a nice life!
3) THE “COOLEY RANKINGS”- Contrary to the US NEWS that ranks the school amongst the fourth-tier trash of America, Cooley begs to differ as they publish their own “Cooley Rankings” on their website ranking it as the SECOND BEST school in America!
4) THE COOLEY “BUSINESS SCHOOL” IS A DIPLOMA MILL- A day and evening program, approximately 84% of enrolment on a part-time basis, a full-time weekend law program….basically creating ANY WAY you can think of to earn a degree from their school [EXCEPT AN ONLINE J.D. PROGRAM-an honor that until this point I believe only Florida Coastal has achieved (still awaiting a formal announcement from Thomas M. Cooley regarding a new online program)].
5) THE NON-EMPLOYMENT OF ITS GRADS- I can say I knew no one who 1) was about to graduate and had found any employment prior to graduation OR 2) anyone who had graduated and eventually found a job
I will elaborate and address each of these in order, backed by statistics and facts, painting a real picture of what Cooley really is, and what your career prospects will likely be post-Cooley.
I. AN “OPEN DOOR POLICY”
From Top Law Schools:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/thomas-cooley-school-of-law.html
“…with an acceptance rate of nearly 80%, admissions at Cooley are hardly selective – last year, 4,570 out of 5,775 received acceptance letters. The admissions office is very forthcoming about its use of an index to streamline their decision-making process: a candidate is scored via the formula (LSDAS GPA*15) + LSAT. The full-time JD class of 2012’s middle 50th percentile LSAT scores ranged from 146-152, with a median of 148; Cooley’s official policy is to accept only the applicant’s highest LSAT score. LSDAS GPA scores varied from a 25th percentile of 2.80 to a 75th of 3.42. The part-time program was less competitive with an LSAT range of 143 to 149, with a median of 145. Its GPA range was 2.58 to 3.34, with a median of 2.97.”
What the fuck???? Are these stats real you might ask yourself? 4570 acceptance letters? It’s a shame that the American Bar Association (ABA) doesn’t require GPA or LSAT minimums scores for law schools. Generally speaking someone with an LSAT score or GPA that low should NOT be attending law school. However, there are some people who just do not do well on standardized tests and may have been more focused on partying and state football in their undergrad years. An LSAT score likely DOES NOT accurately reflect on one’s intelligence or is a good indicator or predictor of law school performance or ability to practice law. THAT BEING SAID, someone who scores lower than a 145 is still probably not anyone you would want representing you or adding prestige to your law school. OK, so I guess Cooley does give a SELECT FEW an opportunity to attempt law school that are potentially more worthy of law school and the profession than those in more prestigious law schools with higher entrance credentials. I will give Cooley credit on this point, and this point alone.
Let’s face it is, law school is very elitist. Any school that strips the profession of the elitism is bound to get ragged on. Thomas M. Cooley is the biggest offender. By defying this law school norm they have taken a huge beating to their reputation. Also, it is very difficult for firms to take a law school like this which accepts some students with absolutely pathetic entrance credentials very seriously.
Don’t worry…. you WILL GET ACCEPTED…but that should not be your biggest concern if you read on. If you get rejected by this school you should probably a) either kill yourself or b) settle for sweeping the hallways at a REAL LAW SCHOOL.
II. ATTRITION RATE & ADMINISTRATIVE POLICIES
From Top Law Schools
“The curve at Cooley is very tough - so much so that 22.4% of 1Ls and 14.5% of 2Ls either choose to leave or flunk out. Even 3Ls are not safe, as 14 of them were forced to leave last year.”
http://www.top-law-schools.com/thomas-cooley-school-of-law.html
“I would suggest adding another category “Attrition rate” where Cooley would surely be number “1″ : 1st Year – 26%; 2nd Year – 10.4%. Cooley wants people to believe that it can accept a host of people with the worst statistics (independent indicators) and come out thinking they are a top law school.”
http://politicalcartel.org/2010/03/03/thomas-cooley-law-school-is-an-embarrassment/
What makes Cooley so bad is not the fact that it is a horrible fourth-tier school, but the fact that it is a fourth ranked school that acts like it is 1st tier school. The window is absolutely HUGE to get in but STAYING IN is RIDICULOUSLY HARD….not to mention the BULLSHIT ADMINISTRATIVE POLICIES at Cooley which are UNHEARD OF AT REAL LAW SCHOOLS:
- The GPA grading curve is amongst the worst in the country. Making it virtually IMPOSSIBLE TO TRANSFER OUT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_school_GPA_curves
The above website lists the law school GPA curve at 2.00-2.40. This GPA at any other school would put you at the DEAD BOTTOM of the class and probably suggest that you did not open a book all term. For Cooley you would still need to work for this disgusting GPA. Therefore DON’T EXPECT YOUR GRADES AT COOLEY to be attractive to any law schools in your goals to transfer out if that’s your reason for attending.
Here is a typical admission office response to your transfer application “Not only did you attend the worst law school in the country but say what????!!!!! You couldn’t even get a 3.0 at that POS law school?”, with the individual immediately proceeding to throw your transfer application (which can cost upward of $100 per school) in the trash bin, next to all the other poor Cooley students trying to get out.
They don’t give a shit that a 3.0 or above at this shitty school would put you in the top 25% of your class. The only marks that will get you to transfer out or will be respectable to any employer coming outta Cooley are A’s….and unfortunately out of 100 people in your class maybe only 7-9 will get them! Oh and there are no +’s at this school either….just the letter or a minus. I wonder what the rationale behind not having a “+” score in grading but having a “-“score could be? Good luck getting good grades at this school.
All it takes is a little bit of research to establish that at the majority of other better ranked law schools, a 3.0 is a mediocre mark whereas that is an all-star mark at Cooley. So hey, you might be “the shit” at Cooley…but how does this all play out in reality??? Employers not familiar with Cooley’s grading policies will see this and be like “WHATTT ARE U SERIOUS THIS KID IS A JOKE, 2.85 FROM COOLEY AND HE WANTS TO WORK HERE???” You will be forced to put your class rank instead of your GPA on your resume out of fear of embarrassment or going directly into the trash.
This will also limit your applications as most law jobs that accept applications through their website ask you for your GPA, NOT YOUR CLASS RANK. In other words, this school makes sure your fucked. Kind of works against you don’t you think? You pay all this money just to have your own school limit your potential? But hey this is THOMAS COOLEY…nothing really makes sense here.
Believe it or not a SEXY 3.0 will put you on the Dean’s List if you got it for the term and the Honor Roll if your cumulative is a 3.0 or above. Try explaining that to an employer…how your mediocre GPA sounding number put you on the honor roll at a bullshit school???!!!!
- Part time and full time students are ranked together
Yep, so when you see your class rank out of 1000 students and think HEY I know people from all the sections in 1L…add em all up and there is no more than 300 people, this should explain why there are such a large number of students ranked. Also from the link below we can see that 84% of the students are part time students:
http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2010/03/smoldering-steaming-pile-of-excrement.html#links
The website above also offers a realistic picture at the very top of what your career prospects will look like. So that rich spoiled son of a bitch who was too stupid to get in anywhere else can afford to take 1-2 classes a term and live off daddy’s money or a trust fund and just coast through life can FOCUS ALL HIS EFFORTS ON TWO CLASSES and get straight A’s while simultaneously degrading your legitimate efforts at 5 courses to a mediocre class rank!!!! Such are the “just” and “ethical” policies of the prestigious Tom Cooley Law Skool.
- Up to two-three weeks prior to the beginning of the term one may not add or change courses
So your only option if you want to change professors or courses when the year starts is to DROP. This is HARDLY the type of policies you would expect at the LARGEST LAW SCHOOL IN THE COUNTRY with by far the most students and largest selection of courses and sections for those courses. This policy is in effect to make sure it takes you longer and is more difficult to obtain a degree from this poor excuse of a law school
- IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO GRADUATE ON TIME
This school requires a mandatory externship that firms take as free labor then byebye! Cooley has four campuses that supply graduates endlessly, do you really think firms give a shit? Additionally after your core required courses in later semesters almost ALL courses are worth only 2 credits…meaning you will have to stack up 6-7 classes a term to graduate without spending longer at Cooley than you want to. This is clearly not realistic.
- In some cases students must wait SEVEN WEEKS FOR THEIR MARKS!!
Marks are due on the fourth Monday of the following term plus add the three weeks off! Further proof the professors get paid to do fuck all. To make matters worse this joke of a law school couldn’t even follow through on this promise for the Fall 2010 marks, with some marks taking an additional 48 hours past the deadline to be posted. Guess the school allots additional time for the professors to get trashed over the holidays and celebrate their high paid salaries all the while laughing at the students dumb enough to attend this waste site.
- Cooley does NOT let you pick your own courses
Other law schools allow a lot of latitude in choosing courses and specializing. Not Cooley- your first three terms are PRE-SET and almost 2/3 of your entire degree is composed of REQUIRED COURSES. So much for taking the courses you want to. But hell, COOLEY KNOWS BEST. After all, they did build this STELLAR REPUTATION in the legal community that keeps employers RACING TO EMPLOY COOLEY GRADS.
- Exams are all closed book
Other schools have open-book exams, meaning you can bring your textbooks and ANY NOTES you please. Cooley reinforces its reputation as a hard-core rigorous elite law school by not allowing this under the pretext that “hey, the bar exam is not open book”. Correct Cooley, I’ll give you that. But what about fucking courses like Tax which are not tested at all on the bar. How do you justify that? Just trying to keep your bar passage rates up and keep your accreditation I assume. Further proof the faculty, staff, executive committee, and administration are all in on the business model described beow and that the students are morons for putting up with this shit. How do you expect someone who is not well versed in tax (which is REQUIRED at this school by the way) to memorize all of that? I have a business background so that is just as good as giving me a 4.0 by closing the books for other students….but boy do I feel bad for the people who find tax challenging. Also in real life, what tax lawyer is not allowed to use a handbook in conducting their practice? Thomas Cooley holds itself out as a PRACTICAL law school, how do you justify this policy then?
- There is no Spring Break
Hey other schools get breaks. Cooley? NO WAY- hey this is a top school, we don’t take breaks. You want the BigLaw experience right? Well the hard work ethic and no-life part you will DEFINITELY GET…in fact this is the closest you will ever get to the BigLaw experience with a degree from this shithole.
- There is no reading week prior to exams
That’s right. You go straight from Week 14 of classes to Week 15 of exams. Class on Friday where you are REQUIRED TO ATTEND and exam on Monday. No room to breathe. You are still studying and doing readings to be prepared for class so you don’t get verbally annihilated by your professor in front of the class and you must simultaneously balance studying for your finals while completing your weekly course readings. Exactly what you’d expect from a fourth-tier school right? Other law school students at different schools would scream over policies such as these.
- All Exams Must be Completed in one week
Most exams are so CRAMMED IN so you will be at the library until 4am having panic attacks a few weeks before exams and entering cardiac arrest each night before an exam. Yessir, it is not uncommon for most 1L students taking 5 courses to write all 5 in 5 days. Pretty crazy don’t you think? Considering the exams are all worth 100% that would probably give anyone a panic attack. Exam schedules are a nightmare to anyone who attends this school. You will be lucky if you are taking 5 exams in 6 days….or 4 exams in 5 days. At other law schools this is unheard of!
- Unfriendly transfer policies
At this garbage school they frequently encourage students NOT to take a full course load. They encourage taking 3-4 classes a term. But seeing as schools like to see 24-30 credits over your first year (two semesters) to transfer, by taking fewer courses it will likely take 3-4 semesters before you reach this number of credits making it IMPOSSIBLE to transfer! NO SCHOOL WILL TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY.
Also, the internet is flooded with reports of the admin offices at Cooley screwing them over. Examples are not sending required items by the deadline required at other schools and sending letters saying students are in bad standing when in fact they are not. Good luck getting into a different school when your own school is going out of its way to fuck you over.
III. THE COOLEY RANKINGS
HEY GUESS WHAT????? DID YOU KNOW THAT ALMOST 5000 STUDENTS GOT ACCEPTED INTO THE SECOND BEST LAW SCHOOL IN THE STATES???? ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS APPLY….80% OF APPLICATIONS WERE ACCEPTED!!!!
Who knew right? In its NEW RANKINGS, Cooley ranks itself the 2nd best school in the United States, RIGHT AFTER HARVARD. WOW, are you surprised? FUCK, I CANT BELIEVE I TRANSFERRED OUT OF THE SECOND BEST LAW SCHOOL IN AMERICA!!! Bet you didn’t think that a 143 on the LSAT and a 2.6 GPA (low ranges from their open door policy from above) from undergrad would get you into the second best law school in the country!!!
THE LINK TO THE SHAM:
http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/overall2010.html
HERE ARE SOME TIPS FOR YOU UNDERGRADS WANTING TO GET INTO THE 2ND BEST SCHOOL IN THE COUNTRY. DO the following and make your parents PROUD BY getting accepted into the SECOND BEST LAW SCHOOL IN THE COUNTRY:
1) Do not attend class, ever.
2) Blow all your money on women and booze! Try developing an addiction to crack while you are at it….if you can pull it all off and get into the best law school with the best career prospects and still have it all, why not?? Charlie Sheen does it right? He’s the highest paid actor on TV and damn is he cool…..all that money and the finest women!!!
3) Drink every night, literally every night during undergrad.
4) Midterm exam tomorrow? Make sure you drink even more the night before and attend the exam with a hangover. Throw in some unprotected drunken sex just to be even more reckless….also you will have something to think about while drawing doodles on your midterm exam the next day.
5) Literally do nothing for the LSAT. Walk in and shade in any letter you want. Go “A,B,C,D” then start from the beginning for the entire 100 question multiple choice exam. This is to ensure you don’t get any freebees by using any decent strategy such as shading in “B” for all responses (you may actually receive a 146 on the LSAT…and who wants to work harder than you should to get into the second best law school in the country right????)
THIS IS THE MOST PATHETIC THING I HAVE SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!! REPREHENSIBLE AT SEVERAL LEVELS. YOU WILL LEARN ABOUT MISREPRESENTATION AND LIABILITY FOR RECKLESS REPORTING IN YOUR TORTS CLASS. I am shocked and dumbfounded the school has not been sued for its misrepresentation on its website as the SECOND BEST LAW SCHOOL IN THE NATION BEHIND HARVARD.
Proof that the executive committee and administration at this school does not have a shred of integrity or moral decency. We should ask them if they would send their kids to the prestigious Thomas M. Cooley Law School! I do not know how they can sleep at night publishing this shit. The audacity of these people just leaves me speechless. Whoever is responsible for this atrocity and public deception should be executed IMMEDIATELY.
In addition to being addressed and ridiculed in several law school forums as well as legal professional communities the “Cooley Rankings” are also referenced to in the following:
1) The Top Law Schools website
The Cooley Rankings
Each year, Judge Thomas E. Brennen (who, by pure coincidence, happens to be dean of Cooley Law School) publishes his own rankings in response to the USNWR, which he sees as flawed. Also by pure coincidence, Cooley tends to land in the top 20 law schools in the country in these rankings, ahead of notables such as Duke, UC Berkeley, and Stanford. These rankings are often critiqued as being highly biased due to the importance they place on factors such as student body size (a third coincidence: Cooley is the nation’s largest law school) and law library square footage. Though the USWNR rankings have received their fair share of criticism over the years, and alternative rankings (such as the Leiter report) can often be credible alternatives, Judge Brennen’s rankings are generally considered (at best) to be little more than a marketing tool for Cooley Law.
http://www.top-law-schools.com/thomas-cooley-school-of-law.html
2) This intelligent Blogger who devoted an ENTIRE PAGE to the ranking system
http://politicalcartel.org/2010/03/03/thomas-cooley-law-school-is-an-embarrassment/
3) Third Tier Reality
http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2010/03/smoldering-steaming-pile-of-excrement.html#links
4) Wikipedia
“In the twelfth edition of Judging the Law Schools, a publication authored by Cooley Law, Cooley ranks itself second (above law schools such as Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, University of Chicago Law School, and Duke University School of Law). The ranking system advocated by the school has come under heavy criticism for the methodology used to determine placement. The school maintains that judging a legal education by what caliber of students enter will not adequately address the quality of lawyers which come out. However, the Cooley ranking system has been criticized for never actually mathematically addressing this issue. Instead, a host of less determinative criteria, like volumes in library, total applications, total law school square footage, total minority faculty (notably ignoring ratio), total enrollment, total titles in library, and total serial subscriptions.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M._Cooley_Law_School
I find it EXTREMELY FUNNY AND WEIRD THAT investors in the stock market require audited financial statements before investing in companies that must be validated and attested to by public accountants working long hours to verify the internal data meanwhile no one cares to audit or check these self-reported statistics from law schools that generate BILLIONS IN REVENUE EACH YEAR! HOW DO U THINK THE PRICE OF STOCKS ARE MEASURED? THE PRESENT VALUE OF FUTURE RETURNS. THE PRICE IS REFLECTIVE OF THE EARNINGS POTENTIAL OF THE STOCK. If the stock market provides shitty returns, negative returns, or NO returns the stock will become less desirable, and no one will buy till it shrivels up and the company dissolves! The average investor lets say has 10-20k invested in stocks. What about the young, innocent, and ambitious law school student who is about to invest 3 years of his life including 150k+ in non-dischargeable debt into a law degree that could have NO RETURN in this shitty job market????!!! There is no one to audit or verify where all this money is going, or to verify there will be any return at all.
IV. COOLEY BUSINESS SCHOOL- A.K.A “DEGREE MILL”
“… in the most recent USNWR rankings, the school received a peer-review score of 1.4, and a lawyers/judges-review score of 1.8 (both out of 5). The school also has one of the highest student-to-faculty ratios in the country, at 23.5. This last statistic contributes to the idea of Cooley as a “degree mill”.
Cooley is priced at $28,740 per year. The school also offers generous LSAT-based scholarships – any candidate who scores 163+ is eligible for a 100% honors scholarship, with correspondingly lower dollar amounts offered for lower scores. Michigan residents are automatically eligible to receive a 10% increase on an honors scholarship.
http://www.top-law-schools.com/thomas-cooley-school-of-law.html
I checked the Cooley website as I was ABSOLUTELY SURE regular tuition is NOT that low and found this:
http://www.cooley.edu/overview/tuition.html
OUCH. $28,740…damn so I was wrong….right? NOPE I dug a little further (in fact just clicked on a link on the same page) to uncover this:
http://www.cooley.edu/prospective/expenses.html
Wait…..and YES I AM RIGHT!!! 32k in tuition alone ….THIRTY TWO THOUSAND $$$ IS ALL YOU NEED TO ATTEND THE SECOND BEST LAW SCHOOL IN THE COUNTRY!!! Why go to those 40k+ top ranked law schools called Stanford and Yale when you can go this prestigious institute of higher learning??
Nice deceit once again. Just 4k. When your students receive their tuition bill and it is too late to turn back I am sure they won’t figure $4000 which is 1/7 of the entire advertised tuition is that big of a deal.
Plus you are getting a FIRST RATE tuition….you do realize it is a PRIVILEGE to attend Cooley right? There are 20% of the other original applicants who would KILL TO BE IN YOUR POSITION. Way to prey on the trusting yet less-than-smart candidates for your prestigious law schools you fucking bloodsuckers!
So this is more of a summary of the whole “open door” policy and attrition rate combination. This private law school is essentially a multi-million dollar business. In fact, in Lansing Michigan where the school is located they are the HIGHEST TAXPAYER….I’m sure the City of Lansing would do ANYTHING for this disgusting mess. HERE IS HOW IT WORKS IN LAYMANS TERMS IN CASE YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THE DYNAMICS:
- Cooley take lotsa students, any student with $$, Cooley take
- Cooley fail out lotta students
- BUT Cooley keep first year money, become more rich
- By flunking out dumber of dumb students; Cooley only keep smarter ones
- half “smarter” students either get out 2 better law school
- other half stay at Cooley and improve Cooleys bar passage rate
- This make Cooley look good
- Cooley get 2 keep its ABA accreditation and still operate as an ABA law school to make more $$
- Cooley bar pass rate is semi-decent not reflective of the horrible reputation and the horrible school it really is because they kick out all dumber suckers that accept admission
- This keep Cooley look good and as lucrative investment to new gullable kiddies
- Cooley lure more kids and get more money
- More, more, money
The whole process is just sickening. Most of these students should not have been in law school in the first place. Sure Cooley, you are giving them a shot….but at what cost? Those without scholarships will waste a year of their life at your school and total estimated expenses of 48K according to your site!!! What says being ethical or having integrity than taking 50k from a poor debt-ridden kid who doesn’t have a shot in hell at practicing law??? The website above provides the 2010-2011 figures….so it is likely that COSTS HAVE ONLY GONE UP to attend this prestigious “business school”. Congrats you criminals, you have accomplished robbery!
100% scholarships to attract students to give your school more credibility and tuition-paying dumbasses who have nowhere else to go in addition to the caveman breakdown above….GREAT BUSINESS MODEL!!! If John Dillinger were alive he would probably quit robbing banks and just decide to run Thomas M. Cooley Law School….seeing as both are essentially same things….only difference is that no one is going after these criminals over at Cooley!!!!
V. THE NON-EMPLOYMENT OF COOLEY GRADS
Yes you read it right. Not unemployment, not under-employment, NON-EMPLOYMENT.
From: TOP LAW SCHOOLS:
Life After Graduation
Like many who earn degrees from Tier 4 schools, Cooley graduates do not tend to finish school with job offers falling into their laps, especially after the recent economic downturn. Graduates are prepared for the Michigan bar only slightly worse than at other schools, passing at a rate of 80%, compared with the state average of 82%. Graduates do not fare well on other bar exams, however. Other popular choices were New York (28 percentage points below average), Illinois (18 below), and California (44 below). Nine months after graduation, only 77.8% of Cooley alumni responding to a school survey have managed to find employment – meaning nearly a quarter remains unemployed; this statistic does not factor in the number of graduates responding to the school’s employment survey, so the real employment figures may be lower. The majority of graduates remain in Michigan to practice law, and go into the private sector – thus putting to good use the hard skills Cooley considers so important.
I am SURPRISED that Cooley publishes its private sector starting salary for at 51k on their site....which seems relatively honest in comparison to publishing their own rankings putting them at the top of the law school rankings. Let me also remind you that PRIVATE PRACTICE IS GENERALLY THE BEST PAYING…..WOW SO YOU CAN PAY 50K/YEAR FOR THREE YEARS FOR A TOTAL OF 150K TO HAVE AN AVERAGE STARTING SALARY OF 50K???? WHAT AN AMAZING INVESTMENT!!! I was making more than that figure PRIOR to attending law school. Also, Cooley's response rate is ridiculously low so it is likely that grads working at McDonalds and Walmart are not responding or the average salary of a "grad" would be much much lower...but hey even they are still employed RIGHT?? All it took was thousands upon thousands of dollars and years of time, effort, and hard-work.
DO NOT ATTEND THIS SCHOOL unless you have guaranteed employment, such as through family or very close friends. Beware the current job market- a job that is promised to you prior to law school may NOT BE THERE after three years through no fault of the promisor.
The value of a Cooley J.D. is virtually worthless. Additionally, the opportunities of even being UNDER-EMPLOYED are very slim. Any diligent employer would be wary of hiring someone for under $15 an hour knowing that individual is being severely under-employed for their “training” as a lawyer. Nothing screams FLIGHT RISK like a J.D. of Law making $11.50. You are kidding yourself and must not take either yourself or the possibility of actually practicing law for a firm very seriously at all if you plan on attending this institution.
THE WORST OF THE LOT are people who come from all over the US come to Cooley to get a law degree. This include LOTS of people from California, Illinois, and the good state of New York. I would go as far to say that approximately 70% of the students at Cooley’s main Lansing campus are from out of state. If you ever are unfortunate enough to ever be in Lansing, Michigan and take a stroll around you will see that virtually EVERY license plate you see in the downtown area immediately surrounding Cooley is filled with out of state plates. These are the “rejects” from almost each and every state who could not get into law school in their own state so all the rejects seek refuge from the harsh reality that they should not be practicing law at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School….which SLOGAN SHOULD BE “WHERE DEGENERATES UNITE” . The idea for these ass-clowns is to attend out of state with the intention of taking their prized Cooley J.D. back to their home state, write the bar, and find employment. I need to ask these people, ARE YOU RETARDED? When mediocre law schools in your own state are having trouble finding jobs for their grads or even paid internships do you think your out of state TTTT degree from one of the worst schools in the country will do any better? NO. NYLS grads are finding things tough and Touro grads literally can’t do shit in New York…you think a TTTT Cooley degree in one of the most saturated markets in America will do you any good at all??? If you think any differently you are in denial. You probably won’t show me your face in four years post-graduation when reality kicks in and all my warnings come true in so I can tell you I TOLD YOU SO.
FINAL WORDS
If you are attending due to a scholarship or affordable tuition, or even a FREE EDUCATION I would not attend here. When applying to firms after graduation would you really say in an interview (assuming you actually get one), “ya they gave me a 100% scholarship, I really am a genius and scored over a 163 on the LSAT”???? Do you think the employer could or will verify any of these statistics to give you any credibility???? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Also the Cooley name is just toxic in the legal community, if they see Cooley anywhere on an app it is likely it is going straight into the garbage. I would not be surprised if partners or hiring managers advise their secretary, HR person, or whoever is screening applications to just dump all the Cooley apps in the trash bin! If you are like me, use your better marks that got you a scholarship for at Cooley and pay full tuition at reputable regional T1 or T2 school….you will not regret it!!
If you are attending with the intention of transferring out ASAP please rethink this option. Yes, top students DO TRANSFER OUT. However, it seems every student enters thinking they will be a part of these top students. If you think you will transfer and be in the top 20% of a class, keep in mind that everyone else is thinking that too….that means 80% of students who think this way will be disappointed. Law school is NOT LIKE UNDERGRAD….in fact it makes undergrad look like a joke! If you didn’t apply yourself then and think you will step it up now….based on no prior law school performance HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY GAUGE your future law school performance???? Do yourself a favor and do not attend with this mentality. In fact do not attend any law school where you would not want to graduate from…other law schools are also difficult to transfer from. However, the stigma associated with Cooley along with the NASTY GRADE CURVE discussed above will make it virtuously impossible to transfer.
If this is your ONLY OPTION to attend law school I would probably re-consider law school as a whole. Either retake the LSAT and do better or find a different career altogether. I know you would like to be a lawyer- but hell, it isn’t for all of us. If everyone could be a doctor or lawyer, don’t you think everyone would be? You want to spend years of your life that you cannot get back, likely get into 150K or more of non-dischargeable debt, for a degree with a ZERO RETURN ON INVESTMENT????!!!! LISTEN TO ME, YOU WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE BY ATTENDING THIS SCHOOL. You can work at Wal-Mart without the Cooley J.D….take my word for it. Listen to my advice, it is the best return on your investment for reading this and quite possibly the best return on investment in your life if you are considering attending the Thomas M. Cooley Law School!
RockStar05
P.S. Cooley considers almost 6000 applications a year, so I am certain that at least 8000 people a year do consider this as an option or look into it. I have done the research and experienced most of this for you, providing the lowdown and exposing one of the biggest scams in modern American history. You’re welcome.
