Just as we expected, the scam-enabling ABA has once again given rotten Cooley a pass by finding it to be in compliance with a so-called standard requiring that 75% or more of those who take a bar exam within two years of graduation pass one in order for the law school to retain accreditation. Reportedly Cooley achieved this feat, just barely, after multiple extensions of the deadline over a period of years.
Odious scam-dean James McGrath gloated in the following words:
I
am pleased to report that 76.2 percent of Cooley’s 2024 graduates who
have taken a bar examination within two years of graduating have passed,
putting us in compliance… Cooley Law School is a
trusted institution where law students are empowered to become
future-ready leaders who think critically, communicate effectively and
are well equipped to navigate and make an immediate impact in today’s
complex and ever-changing legal landscape.
When 76.2% eventually pass, 23.8% never do. Thus scamster McGrath, presiding over the very poster child of über-toilets, is "pleased" to see almost a quarter of those who attempted an exam fail to pass one as long as two years after leaving Cooley's allegedly hallowed halls. That figure, by the way, excludes those who never did attempt a bar exam—and let's not forget that über-toilets have been known to use coercion and even bribery to keep students out of the examination halls for those two crucial years (after which the schools drop their hopeless alumni like a hot potato). Of course, it also excludes those who never graduate.
Critical thinking, effective communication, and capable work in the "legal landscape" will be conspicuous by their absence from the ranks of bottom-feeding Cooleyites. Dredged from the depths of the 140s (if not lower) on the LSAT, they just aren't cut out for any of that. Nevertheless, thanks to Uncle Sugar, they get to borrow the full Cooley-estimated cost of attending their über-toilet, which is $78k per year in Lansing and $81k per year in Tampa. Many will not graduate; a quarter of those who do graduate and do write a bar exam will never pass one, at least within two years of graduation. Yet they'll be saddled with almost a quarter of a million dollars of debt, plus the accruing interest. Many of those loans, of course, will never be repaid, so the tax-paying public will ultimately pick up the tab for scam-school Cooley.
You can thank the ABA for this. For more than five years, it extended deadlines so that Cooley could strive to slip just under the wire, while it was far from the mark—almost 20 percentage points below the mark as recently as last year. Apparently Cooley made itself marginally more "selective" long enough to raise the chance that a few more of its dolts would pass, and perhaps it also discouraged—so to speak—the worst graduates from trying. Now, with the ABA's rubber stamp of approval, it may well be emboldened to sink into the 55% range again and milk its undeserved accreditation for several more years before the ABA pretends to take action.
Even if you pass the bar exam as a Cooley graduate unless you have connections then you very likely will never practice law. I graduated Cooley in the 90's and passed the New York bar examination the first attempt but never found employment in the legal field. Being first generation in my family to even attend college worked against me.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely no network. So I just let my law license lapse and worked at a car dealership selling cars. Filling out sales contracts for a car was the closest "legal work" that I experienced.
Old Guy, too, had no network. He was an old fart from Bumblefuck who didn't know anyone in the legal realm.
DeleteEven connections, however, would not have done you much good, so horrible is the stench of Cooley's name. And a course of study that is little more than three years of bar review would not have served you well as a lawyer anyway.
Cooley preys upon people like you who can easily be led to believe that it is offering an opportunity to get into the middle class. Racialized people are a major target for Cooleyite exploitation, as are people who were the first in their family to attend university.
Cooley was only ever predatory. Until recent years, it was by far the largest law school in the US, with almost 4000 students in 2010. Years ago it came out with its own absurd "ranking" that placed it second in the US, ahead of every other law school but Harvard, just by adopting a shitload of criteria that were proxies for size. It has lost four of its six campuses, and it should have been shut down long ago.
Lots of people graduate from various law schools across the country never find work as a lawyer. When you set up 11 law schools in one state (Florida) that is a guaranteed outcome. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for the massive number of people who graduate from law school each and every year. That said, it is incumbent upon the applicants to carefully consider things like "How well ranked is this law school?" and "How many law schools are in this state, and what is the population of the state?" BEFORE applying to law school. People who just say "Well, that Bachelor's Degree in Film didn't work out, and now I'm working for Domino's delivering pizza, so why not go to law school" are doomed to failure, and that is their own fault. I went to the best law school in the state, in a state with only 2 law schools and a population of over six million people, back in the early 90's before the job market for lawyers fell apart. In a shocking development, upon graduation literally every single person I knew who passed the Bar Exam and was serious found a job. 100% of them. They weren't all good jobs, of course, and the pay for my first couple of years practicing law wasn't very good, but they were jobs, and I managed, over time to really monetize my JD.
DeleteTrue, but it's not just a question of states. Graduates from ABA-accredited law schools may become licensed in any state (though admission in Louisiana takes extra work). If one state did have an appropriate number of law schools, it would quickly be overrun with graduates from other states. As it is, every state has too damn many law schools.
DeleteYou are absolutely right. While 2 law schools is an appropriate number for Maryland, where I studied long ago, in the decades since I graduated the hyper-proliferation of law schools nationwide has made Maryland an awful place for a lawyer trying to find a job. Students work full time in both their 1L and 2L summer, for no pay at all, at the Public Defender's Office, just to have chance of getting a job there afterwards. Most won't, of course, and the entire three years of law school, both in the classroom and in 40 hour a week unpaid summer internships, will end up being a big, expensive, waste of time. For the lucky few who do get hired, well, the PD's office is, of course, a very low-paying, low-prestige job. Many, many people with four year degrees--or less---make far more than an Assistant Public Defender ever will. They pay is so low that some of them moonlight at second jobs on the weekends to try and make ends meet.
DeleteTen years ago, we revealed that lawyers on the payroll of a courthouse in Massachusetts made less than the janitor and the switchboard operator:
Deletehttps://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2015/06/jd-disadvantage-make-less-than-janitor.html
See the comments for a quotation from a public defender who spent five years moonlighting at a liquor store.
And yet, every attempt to move away from the ABA only results in more toilets. The theory is usually that ABA just adds cost and is too rigorous for anticompetitive reasons. Too rigorous?! With a bar pass standard like that? Ha! But I digress. By the logic of most actual policymakers, more schools means more competition and more competition means lower tuition.
ReplyDeleteWhat we really need is not accreditation reform but something more like "certificate of need" laws like some states have for hospitals. A CON, in states that have it, basically says you need to get approval based on actual community need to build another one.
Same with taxicab medallions in cities that have them (or at least, so it WAS, pre-Uber). It was a recognition of the fact that while competition is generally good, flooding the market can congest traffic and lead to unscrupulous operators.
We need a certificate of need regime for law schools, IMHO, and things like hospitals and ambulances and taxicab medallions provide the template for how to do it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need
The problem is that even going to a t14 is not the panacea these days. A lot of people who go to a t14 who leave big law after three years and will never work a law job again. A lot of these graduates will become stay at home spouses or get some "teaching job" at a local university.
ReplyDelete"Teaching" law is another false promise. On the one hand, young people from the right sort of background get cushy jobs at scam-schools. On the other, adjuncts may get a flat fee of $3000 for teaching a semester-long course, with no access to the university's facilities (not even the library).
DeleteWell, if you want to use your law license to deport people the Trump admin will pay you $160k plus to work remotely as an immigration judge: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/11/21/kristi-noem-deportation-judges/87392684007/
ReplyDeleteI hesitate to mention this option, but I am sure that the fascist state will fill those openings with whether or not we publish anything about them here.
DeleteAren't those the jobs that DOGE fired and then the admin decided that they needed them after all? Not exactly stable employment.
DeleteHow can anyone be dumb enough to go to Cooley? For five years, at least, it was far below the weak standard for passing a bar exam. This year, after being put on probation, it barely met the threshold. Anyone who goes to Cooley knowing those facts deserves whatever calamity occurs. Certainly don't come crying to Old Guy.
ReplyDelete