Law School Amplifies Critics Through SLAPP Suit 123
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. "
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Wow, this school has balls. (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [cooley.edu]
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.
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
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).