Cooley Law question Forum

[Wade LeBosh]

I feel a little silly asking this, but what is TLS' deal with Cooley Law? TLSers treat it like the epitome of what's wrong with legal education and it is constantly the butt of jokes on this website. What makes Cooley worse than any other TTT or TT? What are the origins of the pejorative use of "Cooley Law" on TLS? Is this negative opinion of Cooley Law shared by folks in the legal community (besides TLS)? Thanks, I'm sure you all can imagine the futility of searching "Cooley Law" on TLS.

BTW, I'm a URM with good numbers so I'm not asking because I'm interested, I just want to know what sets Cooley apart from the others.

[dr123]

I'd say most of the hate stems from this...

http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/

[JusticeHarlan]

I'd say most of the hate stems from this...

http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/

As a poster once put it,

You know at the bar, where there are a group of relatively unattractive women? You wouldn't usually just start calling them "fat" or "ugly," because it is rude and in poor taste. But if one of them is wearing a tube top and teeny shorts that say "SEXY" on them, you'll probably point out to your buddies that she is, in fact, atrocious?

Cooley wears "SEXY" shorts.

[esq]

Is this negative opinion of Cooley Law shared by folks in the legal community (besides TLS)? Yup.

[lawgod]

Bummer. I was expecting a decent flame thread.

[Wade LeBosh]

I'd say most of the hate stems from this...

http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/

As a poster once put it,

You know at the bar, where there are a group of relatively unattractive women? You wouldn't usually just start calling them "fat" or "ugly," because it is rude and in poor taste. But if one of them is wearing a tube top and teeny shorts that say "SEXY" on them, you'll probably point out to your buddies that she is, in fact, atrocious?

Cooley wears "SEXY" shorts.

That's a pretty good (and funny) description. Did Cooley really make their own ranking system, employ arbitrary factors (like "richness of curriculum" and "total law school sq footage"), rank themselves #2 below Harvard (and above of Yale ), and try to present it on their website as an alternative to USNWR? That's F'd up for a number of reasons. The "sexy shorts" analogy made perfect sense after I read that hilarious document. I'm now on board with hating Cooley and actually find myself incensed at their audacity.

Just the diss to Yale is enough to warrant hatred, not to mention the blatantly misleading statistics and busch-league shots at "top" and "elite" schools.

[Wade LeBosh]

You'd have to have an incredibly low LSAT and GPA to go there. I would think that someone that did that poorly in college wouldn't even WANT to go to law school.

[JoeFish]

From their website: "Applicants with an LSAT of 149 or higher may be eligible for a generous Honors Scholarship". That's a pretty low number to be dishing out schollies to, let alone attending.

But the real kicker is this: they have an admissions formula of 15*GPA + LSAT, and if you're over 195 you qualify too. Meaning that, for every .066 you are above 3.07, you can knock another point off of that LSAT.

Honestly, as has been said, there are lots of bad schools, but the ones that are going to get mauled on here are the ones that pretend they're superawesomefantastic with great job opportunities. You know, the ones that lie.

Since the general academic quality of the student body and the rank of the school are intricately related, with the best schools attracting the best applicants and the best applicants choosing the best schools, the above formula speaks volumes about Cooley.

[KevinP]

HAHAHAH!!! I just looked at their rankings, they bumped themselves up from 12th place to 2nd place!!!

"Second, Judging adds eight new factors in the 12th edition"
...
"Another two were chosen to reflect the increasing significance of globalization."
"The eighth was added to offer perspective on each school’s commitment to providing adequate library materials."

"Third, because the Official Guide does not assert that any one factor is more important than another, Judging gives each of the 40 factors equal weight in its overall ranking"

[Wade LeBosh]

HAHAHAH!!! I just looked at their rankings, they bumped themselves up from 12th place to 2nd place!!!

"Second, Judging adds eight new factors in the 12th edition"
...
"Another two were chosen to reflect the increasing significance of globalization."
"The eighth was added to offer perspective on each school’s commitment to providing adequate library materials."

"Third, because the Official Guide does not assert that any one factor is more important than another, Judging gives each of the 40 factors equal weight in its overall ranking"

Yeah they consider law school square footage equal to clerkship placement

[gin]

I'd say most of the hate stems from this...

http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/

Wow. Not even on their biased rankings the conjured up to make themselves seem like a good school are they number one

[JusticeHarlan]

HAHAHAH!!! I just looked at their rankings, they bumped themselves up from 12th place to 2nd place!!!

"Second, Judging adds eight new factors in the 12th edition"
...
"Another two were chosen to reflect the increasing significance of globalization."
"The eighth was added to offer perspective on each school’s commitment to providing adequate library materials."

"Third, because the Official Guide does not assert that any one factor is more important than another, Judging gives each of the 40 factors equal weight in its overall ranking"

Yeah they consider law school square footage equal to clerkship placement

IIRC, they count it far more than clerkship placement. My recollection is that they have a category for total law school square footage, library square footage, and non-library square footage. The first one is just the combination of the other two. But they want to count it again.

[Helmholtz]

Liberty Law is funnier

[Sentry]

I wish I'd known about the Cooley rankings earlier. I turned down one of HCG for a non T20....

[esq]

Liberty Law is funnier

Liberty Law is pretty redic. We should start making fun of them more often.

[Voltaire]

Are they for serious with their "If the NFL practiced elitism?" There's no way that's a site for a real school.

[WhatSarahSaid]

Are they for serious with their "If the NFL practiced elitism?" There's no way that's a site for a real school.

Honestly, that's not even that bad of a point. The comparison between NFL teams selecting college QBs and firms selecting associates isn't perfect, of course, but it's a nice way to rope people into disliking the USNWR rankings.

Cooley's site actually does a pretty good job at pointing out some of the flaws with the USNWR rankings. The issue, of course, is that their alternative is significantly worse, due mostly to most of their factors being reliant on quantity -- since Cooley is by far the biggest law school, they win out in a lot of categories.

Their website does let you sort all law schools by each factor, which is actually pretty interesting. I refuse to believe that Northern Kentucky University has 132 "library hours per week with professional staff"; that's an average of almost 19 hours a day!

[DMBFan]

I was looking up some of the NY State senators (in connection to their debate of marriage equality), and I noticed that Sen. Mark Grisanti is a graduate of Cooley (source: http://www.senatormarkgrisanti.com/?cat=1). Not defending Cooley, and I know political success is different from legal success, but at least 1 Cooley grad is doing well.

[SlipperyPete]

.

[dudders]

I just looked up one of my county's three prosecutors on LinkedIn and learned he graduated from Cooley ... I'm not one to bash other schools on TLS, but his degree, no joke, is listed as "juris doctrine."

[loblaw]

I just looked up one of my county's three prosecutors on LinkedIn and learned he graduated from Cooley ... I'm not one to bash other schools on TLS, but his degree, no joke, is listed as "juris doctrine."

love it!

[crossarmant]

I was looking up some of the NY State senators (in connection to their debate of marriage equality), and I noticed that Sen. Mark Grisanti is a graduate of Cooley (source: http://www.senatormarkgrisanti.com/?cat=1). Not defending Cooley, and I know political success is different from legal success, but at least 1 Cooley grad is doing well.

Cooley has such a massive population and because it seems that it's mostly a lot of people from across America going there because it's the only school they got into (got duped into), that I imagine they have a ton of grads in every corner of the US. It seems like Cooley like an oak tree, and the students are like acorns. The oak makes tons of acorns and the fall and get scattered all over the landscape. Most acorns get eaten by squirrels are destroyed or otherwise are completely useless, but there's always that one acorn out of the thousands that gains roots and grows into a tree. Then you think "Wow, the tree came gre out of a little acorn from Cooley." Though you don't think of the other 3999 acorns that got mashed and destroyed.

[esq]

"It seems like Cooley like an oak tree, and the students are like acorns."

Are you from Cooley yourself?

[crossarmant]

"It seems like Cooley like an oak tree, and the students are like acorns."

Are you from Cooley yourself?

No. That was not mean to sound as flattering for Cooley or it's grads. You can change the analogy to a lot of other things in nature... like 800 baby sea turtles swimming across the ocean, but 750 get eaten on the way.... take your pick of natural world comparison where a few survive out of a ton.

[ahduth]

"It seems like Cooley like an oak tree, and the students are like acorns."

Are you from Cooley yourself?

No. That was not mean to sound as flattering for Cooley or it's grads. You can change the analogy to a lot of other things in nature... like 800 baby sea turtles swimming across the ocean, but 750 get eaten on the way.... take your pick of natural world comparison where a few survive out of a ton.

Sperm?