Tom Cooley Sues..... Me?

Below is an email that Pres. LeDuc of Tom Cooley sent to students. Is he gonna sue me?  I'm a little scared.  But I won't let his threats affect my speech.  Doesn't Tom Cooley fall into some sort of "public figure" exception?  Ha. If I wrote bad things about Walmart, could they sue me too?  

Sounds like a load of horse shit, i.e. Motion to Dismiss GRANTED.  Good to know they are educating lawyers over there.  And they should solicit students to join the lawsuit on the side of Cooley.  I imagine it will strengthen their case as every Tom Cooley grad claims to have suffered from T. Cooley's insufferable reputation.  I imagine the students would join too, so long as they are promised immunity from prosecution when they graduate and "defame" Tom Cooley on their scamblogs.

Life is stranger than fiction.


Update:  They're not suing me!  Happy Day.  Check out the complaint right here.

To: Students 

From: President LeDuc 

Re: Litigation 

Date: July 14, 2011 

 Cooley filed two lawsuits in Ingham County today.   

The first lawsuit is against a small New York law firm.  Our suit contends that the 

firm has defamed us and tortiously interfered with our student relationships, and that the 

firm and two of its lawyers have been unethically soliciting former and present Cooley 

students to join in a class action lawsuit against us.  At our insistence, the firm previously 

retracted blatantly false online statements about Cooley, but only days later the firm 

moved their focus to Craigslist and Facebook, where they began circulating a draft 

complaint filled with more false and damaging statements about Cooley.  

The second lawsuit is against four John Doe defendants.  As with the law firm 

defendants, we contend the Doe defendants are defaming Cooley online and tortiously 

interfering with our student relationships through a series of false, damaging, and often 

vulgar statements in Internet blogs and comments to those blogs and other sites. 

Two main falsities run through the defendants' online statements.  

First, the bloggers state that Cooley is engaged in student loan fraud and stealing 

tuition money.  They say we are secretly employed as bankers, not professors, who are 

engaged in the fraudulent sale of student loans.  We are called criminals and said to be 

under investigation by two federal agencies. 

Second, the law firm defendants falsely state that we are fraudulently hiding a 

preposterous 41% student loan default rate and fraudulently reporting and 

misrepresenting our post-graduation employment and salary numbers, misleading 

students into attending law school. 

 The actual facts are as follows.  

Default rates—Student loan default rates are calculated by the U.S. Department 

of Education’s Default Prevention and Management Office. We are not involved in their  

calculation.  Cooley’s most recent default rate was 2.2%.  While the rate is slightly higher 

than in the previous four years, it is the same as it was in 2001, and is lower than our 

default rate in the mid-to-late 1990s, during the last recession. The most recent national 

average default rate was 7.0%. 

The past five years Cooley had overall default rates of 1.5%, 0.8%, 0.8%, 0.7%,  

and 2.2%.  The rates for Cooley graduates during the same years were 0.6%, 0.1%, 0.1%, 

0.1%, and 0.6%.  As you can see from above, even at the most recent 2.2%, Cooley’s 

default rate is very low compared to the national default rate. 

The defaulters are predominantly students who did not graduate.  

In the past five yea

rs, only 16 graduates entered into default.  The other 55 defaulters in that time did not 

graduate, and are likely to have lower student loan debt totals in default.  Not all of our 

students have loans, but of the current graduates who do, the average indebtedness is 

approximately $105,000. 

The defendants' statements about manipulation of students to obtain loans, selling 

loans, or having employees who are really bankers are just bizarre.  We have never been 

investigated regarding irregularities in our loan program by any governmental agency.   

Employment data—We have reported our employment data exactly as required 

by the American Bar Association and the National Association for Law Placement.   

The reported figure we use publicly is the number that the ABA publishes in its 

Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools. We are required to submit this 

information in a specific format that includes the number and percentage of graduates 

employed among those whose status is known.  In the 2011 Official Guide, Cooley’s 

reported employment rate was 78.8%. 

We have never manipulated the data or attempted to mislead anyone.  No school I 

know of, Cooley included, makes any promise or commitment about jobs for graduates, 

other than to say it provides placement counseling and assistance to graduates seeking to 

get jobs.  And, of course, all who pass the bar are equipped with the necessary skills to 

begin a solo practice, in which they may work as lawyers if they are willing to make the 

effort required to be successful.  In that sense, law students graduate with the means to 

begin working for themselves almost immediately -- something that cannot be said for 

most other professions. 

The entire conversation about employment in the law and legal occupations is 

almost entirely wrong: 

 1. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the unemployment rate 

among lawyers in 2010 was 1.5%, for those in all legal occupations it was 2.7%, and for 

all occupations it was 9.6%, which drops to 8.9% when those who have never been in the 

labor market or are returning from military service are excluded. 

 2. The 2.7% unemployment rate for legal occupations, including lawyers, was 

better than the rate for all other occupations in the BLS category of management, 

professional, and related occupations except for health care practitioners and technician 

occupations (2.5%). This data shows that becoming a lawyer is a better choice for those 

considering a career, not a worse choice.   

 3. According to the National Association of Law Placement (NALP), the 

preliminary unemployment rate for the 2010 graduates of the 192 ABA-approved law 

schools that reported data to NALP was 6.2%, about the same as it was in 2002. 

 4. Cooley’s unemployment rate for 2010 was 17.05%, slightly higher than it was 

in 2002.  Like the national rate, Cooley’s rate fell during the decade until the recession, 

when it bumped up.  This reflects unemployment among the graduating class in 2010 and 

includes those who did not pass the bar on the first try and those who did not attempt a 

bar examination.  

Summary  

While it would not be appropriate for me to publicly discuss our entire legal 

strategy, rest assured that we have given much consideration to these actions, and our 

Board has agreed that legal action is necessary to protect and defend the school's 

reputation and the value of your degree.  We could have done nothing, but then we risk 

being sued by the defendant law firm, and the media would then report only the false and 

defamatory hyperbole stated in the draft complaint that the firm has been circulating on 

Facebook and advertising on Craigslist. 

We are not suing anyone for expressing a negative opinion about Cooley online, 

and we are not attempting to police the Internet.  We believe these particular defendants 

have crossed the line both legally and ethically, calling us criminals who deceive our 

students and steal their tuition money, and ascribing to us fraudulent student loan 

activities and default rates that, if true, would cause either the Department of Education 

or Department of Justice to shut us down immediately. 

In short, we've determined that we need to protect Cooley's reputation and stand 

up for our students and more than 15,000 graduates.  And we continue to look at ways to 

counter the negative comments with positive comments about us, including online. 

From time to time, we will post updates about the litigation on the Portal. 

Thanks for your support