ABA Drops the Ball on WMU Cooley

As I noted in this recent post, Western Michigan University Thomas Cooley Law School continues to be out of compliance with ABA Standard 316, having missed the ABA's 75% Ultimate Bar Pass rate (at least 75 percent of a law school’s graduates in a calendar year who sat for a bar examination must have passed a bar examination administered within two years of their date of graduation) for the classes of 2017, 2018 and 2019.  Back in May 2020, the ABA gave WMU two years to come into compliance with Standard 316.  Instead, WMU's UBP rate dropped in successive years -- from 66% for the class of 2017, to  62.3% for the class of 2018, to 59.5% for the class of 2019.

One might have expected a robust response from the ABA.  Instead, while noting Cooley's continued non-compliance, the ABA gave Cooley a three-year extension to come into compliance, with some modest conditions attached, as reflected in the Council's Notice of Correction Action posted on the ABA's website.  

What was Cooley's defense?  Basically, the new Dean, James McGrath, acknowledged that Cooley used to have really weak admission standards before he came in, but now, they have tightened those standards; so, he argued, there is every reason to believe that bar pass rates will start going up in a couple of years.   And I believe this to be true.  I have previously given credit to Dean McGrath for the very substantial improvement in entrance credentials at WMU Cooley that coincided with his appointment as Dean, and have continued.  But I take issue with one argument apparently made by Dean McGrath.  According to an article in the ABA Journal, the poor performance on the bar exam "relates to old admissions standards that Cooley Law used before he arrived, which were in place prior to Standard 316 being revised."   What Cooley seems to have successfully argued to the ABA is that Standard 316 didn't go into effect until 2019, and that, as soon as it did (starting with students entering in 2020), they tightened their admissions standards, so therefore they shouldn't be punished for their old admissions standards.  But this argument ignores the fact that Cooley was placed on notice in 2017 that their admissions standards were too low, when they were found out of compliance with ABA Standard 501(b), after I and others had repeatedly called for action against Cooley. As I noted in this post, "The class that Cooley admitted in 2015 is statistically the worst entering class of law students in the history of American legal education at an ABA-Accredited law school, and that is saying something."  

So, given that Cooley was specifically informed that their admissions practices were unacceptable in 2017, why should the ABA give Cooley a break when Cooley continued to admit hundreds of unqualified students in 2018 and 2019, students with no meaningful prospect of passing the bar, in clear violation of ABA Standard 501(b)?   Perhaps the answers lies in the fact that the ABA left Cooley off the hook back in March 2018, inexplicably finding the school back in compliance with ABA Standard 501(b), just in time for them to admit hundreds more unqualified students for the fall 2018 entering class.  This decision surely must go down as one of the most wrong-headed decisions the ABA has ever made, as I noted in an baffled post I wrote at the time.  Indeed, at the same time the ABA was letting Cooley off the hook, they found two schools with higher admissions standards to be out of compliance with the admissions standard.  The bottom line is that the ABA essentially authorized Cooley's exploitative admissions practices which led to the incredibly weak class that WMU admitted in 2018.   And, although Cooley started to improve its admissions practices in 2019, it was still the least selective law school in the country that year (for more granular information about the dreadfully underqualified students Cooley was admitting in those years, see my Bottom Ten lists for 2017, 2018, and 2019.) 

Given that Cooley knew for years that it was admitting droves of students with no meaningful likelihood of passing the bar exam, and was never punished for it, I think it is fundamentally wrong to not punish Cooley for the completely predictable abominable results on the bar exam that these classes achieved.   On the other hand, I can see why the ABA might be reluctant to punish Cooley now for results achieved by students under admissions practices that the ABA essentially authorized back in March 2018.  This conundrum illustrates the folly of not having clear standards and consistent enforcement of those standards.  Giving Cooley a free pass for their horrendous UBP rates continues this tradition of weak enforcement and sets a very poor example for future enforcement of Standard 316.  How bad do things have to be before the ABA decides to actually sanction a law school?

I continue to believe that the most appropriate sanction against Cooley would be to offer some kind of refund or loan forgiveness to the many students who never should have been admitted in the first place who  have wasted years of their lives attempting to become lawyers.   These are the victims of Cooley's exploitation and they deserve some form of reparations.   Sadly, because the ABA was also complicit in their victimization, the ABA is unable or unwilling to do anything to rectify these past wrongs.    

 

Comments

[anon]

David

I'm surprised that it appears you deleted an entire thread of comments. Not like you! Either it was a mistake (there appeared to be two identical posts) or, perhaps, you succumbed to undue (and unwarranted) influence?

[David Frakt]

It seems that there was a duplicate post and the site manager removed one, along with all the comments. I will see if I can get the comments back. I had no role in removing them.

[anon]

Thought this would be the explanation.
I did notice (and note) the duplicate posts.
Good to hear that you didn't intend to delete the one with all the comments.
Thanks David, sincerely.