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Law School Amplifies Critics Through SLAPP Suit
An anonymous reader writes "Michigan's Thomas M. Cooley Law School recently filed a lawsuit that appears to be boomeranging in the worst possible way. A little-noticed pseudonymous blogger respectfully disagreed with Cooley's self-awarded number-2 ranking, nationwide (well, perhaps not so respectfully), and had a few other choice things to say. So, Cooley went ahead and hired some lawyers (who had graduated from Georgetown and the University of Michigan) to file a lawsuit to unmask the blogger. And EFF cooperating attorney John Hermann got involved. "
No; Cooley hired lawyers who had graduated from Georgetown and Michigan. (Both excellent schools.) They did this to go after a blogger who was claiming something bad about Cooley. The poster is implicitly pointing out that they did not trust Cooley graduates to bring their lawsuit.
To be fair, I would much prefer GULC (Georgetown) or Michigan grads. Georgetown's great for practicality, depth of curriculum, non-profit work, and DC connectedness. Michigan is great for Academia, just a notch behind Yale, really, and more like Yale than Harvard. Both have great students.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Cooley, a law school I've never heard of, claimed to be the 2nd highest rated law school in the country. They got pissed when someone called BS. They hired lawyers from a couple of well-known law schools and sued the guy. This lead to us average joes hearing about it.
In other words, a bunch of scumbag cunts are writhing around like snakes in a pit trying to kill each other and a crowd is gathering.
Real Americans should pitch in by gathering up other cunt lawyers and throwing them into the same pit. That way we can burn them all with less impact on the environment.
I am not a lawyer and i would be very offended if anyone claimed that i am.
As a little background, Cooley is ranked by US News and World Report as one of the worst law schools in the country; it's reputation among lawyers is pretty much the same, I believe. I've read the lawsuit and actually they probably have a decent case against 3 of the 4 defendants if the statements they made were true (very specific statements about them being under investigation, for example, are not protected as opinion). As for hurting their reputation, in my opinion their reputation is sufficiently bad that this lawsuit isn't really going to make it any worse. Kind of a funny side note, Cooley doesn't like that reputation so they created their own rankings system using supposedly "objective" standards where they ranked themselves #2, or ahead of every other law school in the country (including Yale, which is generally considered to be the best, noticeably outranking even Harvard). The standards they picked, of course, are ones that will rank them highly even though they don't really have anything to do with academic excellence (number of students, number of books in the library, number of seats in the library (seriously), total area of the law school).
Honestly, I think the term's fallen out of use because so goddamn many suits are the result of this tactic now.
All schools have great students. All schools also have lousy students. If I needed a lawyer, I'd hire a great student, not one from some particular school.
Yes, if you are law school X, you might want to hire alumni for your legal matters - but more as a part of marketing than anything else. Oh, and avoiding bad press. I've never heard of Cooley before, but now my first impression is that they are idiots.
See, now that's how you write a summary.
You are welcome on my lawn.
To summarize the parent link, some current student begins his review by praising Cooley's liberal admissions policy and explaining that Cooley will take you if no one else will. He goes on to complain that the grading system is severe, A's and B's are "hard to come by", and the school flunks out students in their first, second, or third year. "To stay afloat and not flunk is difficult once you get accepted," he complains.
Well, damn. The kid finally found a law school to accept his mediocre ass, and now he's complaining because the academic standards aren't as lax as the admission standards. IT'S LAW SCHOOL, kid. I think he might be better suited to a community college.
For a good laugh, have a look at the blatantly cherry-picked ranking system they built for themselves:
http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/search/report-byschool.php
Now select Harvard, Yale or whatever you think are actual good schools and do the comparison... Well, whaddaya know! Cooley comes out first overall, as well first in such important metrics as:
* Foreign National Enrollment
* Part-Time Faculty
* First-Year Section Size
* Library Hours per Week with Professional Staff
* Library Seating Capacity
* Law School Square Footage Excluding Library
* Total Law School Square Footage
* Number of States in which Graduates Employed
Here's the kicker: Percentage of Graduates Employed is only 78.8%, meaning you are roughly twice as likely as the average person in this country to be unemployed after having graduated from their program! But the median of all their useless metrics puts them at number one, because their ranking system gives equal weight to Library Seating Capacity as Percentage of Graduates Employed.
There appears to be a lot more to his complaint, such as
Cooley registrar's office personnel and professors are known to prolong or refuse to give letters of good standing and recommendations to students seeking to leave-like blocking a professional swimmer wearing a life jacket from jumping off the Titanic
He also indicates an incredibly high attrition rate, and a very low bar passage rate. In other words, youre likely to flunk out, and if you dont, youre still unlikely to pass the bar. That does sound like a rather awful university. I think he cited 60% attrition rate and 40-50% bar passage rate (so 15-20% of people who enter the school will actually be able to practice).
So you've worked with University of Phoenix graduates too, huh?