A Rant on Thomas Cooley's Advertising and Budget

I've previously mocked Thomas Cooley's absurd marketing techniques, but I didn't realize the true depths of the demonic awfulness in their hokey solicitations until today.

Sometimes, those who comment and write on these issues luck into finding a graph, a picture, or a table that speaks for itself. This is one of those times.

From Guidestar.org, the following represents the amount of money this set of relatively-comparable schools (private, non-profit, unaffiliated, ABA-accredited) spent on advertising and promotion in 2009 (Form 990, Part IX, Line 12):

Thomas Cooley: 2,167,925
New England: 669,677
Ave Maria: 323,259
William Mitchell: 263,907
Vermont.: 158,475
John Marshall (Chi.): 124,000
New York L.S.: 122,470
South Texas: 89,567
(note: Thomas Jefferson and Brooklyn's numbers were unfortunately not available).

$2 million. If you went to Thomas Cooley that year, you, individually, paid almost $600 so that the school could con someone else into going there. You could have enjoyed a shopping spree, eaten fifteen to twenty top Lansing dining experiences, bought a night with an std-free escort, etc.

Instead, you paid for advertisements so the worst law school in America - North America, in fact - can try to convince people that Cooley is a worthwhile use of six figures and three years.

In 2009, Ave Maria packed up its entire school and moved to a completely different region of the country. It spent a mere 15% of what Cooley did.

Granted, much of Cooley's number might come from its absurd stadium naming-rights deal, but that didn't take place until early 2010 and it still begs the question why a quality professional school would ever need to buy naming rights to a minor league baseball stadium. And they do have the highest enrollment in the country, which may justify some additional promotional costs.

But $2 million? When John Marshall barely spends six figures?

Think of all the superior ways that money could have been used. Cooley could have made a donation to the Lansing public school system, bought an elementary school or something. It could have founded programs for troubled youth, disease research centers, good ol' legal aid foundations: the sky's the limit for the truly munificent.

Nope. A baseball stadium name. And $2.1 million spent on advertising.

And it's not like they're getting a quality product for the money, either. This is some pretty watered-down stuff. God-awful would be one description for their advertising. Hysterical would be another.

Take, for example, Cooley's laughable NFL comparison:

Yes, you read that correctly: Cooley is trying to convince doe-eyed 149ers that because NFL quarterbacks come from places like Miami-Ohio, using prestige in the law school business is as silly as a Matt Millen draft.

I actually like the analogy, but not for the reason Cooley wishes. It's a beautiful illustration of cherry-picking with anecdotal evidence, a really common logical flaw in law school advertising (if not the world at large).

Here's the reality for football players: a high school quarterback who wants to get to the NFL has the best chance to get there if he goes to USC, Texas, Florida, etc. Likewise, A college graduate who wants to work at Cravath has the best chance to get there if he goes to Harvard or Yale.

Ultimately, the concern isn't with the few Cooley graduates who make BigLaw or the few NFL players who hail from Miami-Ohio. It's about the odds of a a random person at Cooley, or at Miami-Ohio or similar football school, to make that end destination. The population isn't the end population (BigLaw or NFL), but the starting one (all people at Cooley or a lousy football school).

To illustrate the analogy, let's say Cooley is the 200th best law school in the country (this is generous, as it excludes some non-ABA accredited schools that may be finer institutions). Last year, Jeff Sagarin's rankings listed Fordham, Bethune-Cookman, and the Citadel as the 199-201st best college football teams in the country.

So how many Fordham, Bethune-Cookman, and the Citadel graduates are in the NFL right now? 1 for Fordham, 3 for Bethune-Cookman, and 1 for the Citadel.

Those teams have roughly the same number of overall players and alumni as schools like Texas (41 active pros), LSU (40), and Miami (40). See a difference in the odds? A random player at the "more prestigious" colleges was 24 times more likely to make the NFL.

This is why top high school talent continues to go to Texas, LSU, Miami, etc. and not Fordham, Bethune-Cookman, or the Citadel. The same principle is why budding lawyers would never, ever dream of going to Cooley when Columbia is an option.

Kids, the analogy works, from the school's own fire-breathing mouth: if you go to Cooley, your odds of making the big leagues are the about as good as a random football player from Fordham, Bethune-Cookman, or the Citadel making the NFL.

The differences? Most of those schools offer scholarships to their football players. At Cooley, you have the privilege of paying $200k for a glorified lottery ticket from a school that's basically conceding that everyone thinks it's a piece of crap. And there are opportunities for the low-level college football players to show off their skills. No such thing exists in law.

You could theoretically be the second coming of Louis Brandeis, but if you go to Cooley, your odds of getting anywhere prestigious in the law are worse than the 65th percentile graduate at Cornell, even if you ace everything and edit enthralling editions of the law review single-handedly. Yes, this is a dumb system, but it's wrong for Cooley to portray it as otherwise and act like its stellar graduates may actually have a good chance.

Of course, anyone with moderate logical ability figures all this out rather quickly, which speaks to the utterly poor quality of the propaganda at issue. Only the least-sophisticated consumer could fall for this shit, meaning Cooley's LSAT median probably isn't going to rise any time soon.

As an aside, their own advertising shows a distinct lack of college football knowledge. Note in the following how Stanford is a more prestigious football program than Virginia Tech, Texas A&M, BYU, West Virginia, Clemson, Boston College, and Michigan State (heck, national title game aside, I don't even Oregon is top 20 yet).

One has to wonder if Cooley used the same formula as their proprietary law school rankings to rank college football programs.

In any event, that $2 million is clearly paying for the best Madison Avenue can offer. It makes one wonder why, instead of naming stadiums and putting out ridiculous Soviet-level propaganda, the administrators don't just hire their own graduates at 20k and have them do it. Surely, a group of Cooley grads could come up with something better than a horrendous NFL analogy that doesn't work in the school's favor for anyone with three brain cells.

Cooley is clearly in a league by itself. As bad as LaVerne or Thomas Jefferson or Florida Coastal may be, they've got nothing on the multi-campus money-sucker of Cooley. It is the 5th tier, the 6th, the 7th; no matter how many tiers of legal education hell one wishes to construct (or deduct...), Cooley is at the bottom of the barrel, the slumpbuster of law schools, the scenic vacation in northern New Jersey, the menu item no one but a drunk would order. As far as I can tell, it's worse than the for-profits, worse than the state-accredited schools, worse than the LLMs in International Donkey Saddle Arbitration.

$2 million isn't going to get it any respect, but rather make sure its place at the bottom of the toilet is firmly cemented. Is there any scenario where such a figure can even possibly be justified? In a world where LSAC and resources like US News are more than happy to advertise for free?

The cherry on top is that when I logged on right before posting this, there was a google ad for Cooley at the top of my page. I find this hilarious and fitting, and it only slightly diminishes when I think about the long-term consequences of having student loan with a low return-on-investment paying off this small part of a $2 million pool.

University of Iowa Law Review: The Future of Legal Education, Brought to You By UC-Irvine Law

The University of Iowa Law Review is hosting a symposium on February 25-26 entitled "The Future of Legal Education." Among the topics will be economic viability, preparation for legal practice, judges' perspectives, and the ABA.

On the surface, it sounds like the exact same issues that independent legal bloggers (including the "scambloggers" and the guys at Law School Transparency) have become experts on over the past two years. Furthermore, journalists like David Segal (and even some at the ABA Journal) have examined in-depth the current state of legal education.

But now let's take a look at the distinguished guest list for this symposium, shall we?

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Keynote Speaker	University of California, Irvine School of Law
Dean Gail B. Argawal	University of Iowa College of Law
Professor Judith C. Areen	Georgetown University Law Center
Justice David L. Baker	Iowa Supreme Court
Joel W. Barrows	Assistant U.S. Attorney, Southern District of Iowa
Dean Jay Conison	Valparaiso University School of Law
Dean Michael A. Fitts	University of Pennsylvania Law School
Kelly M. Hnatt	Partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP
Dean Kevin R. Johnson	University of California, Davis School of Law
Dean Richard A. Matasar	New York Law School
Judge Michael J. Melloy	U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals
Dean Cyndi Nance	University of Arkansas School of Law
Associate Dean Larry E. Ribstein	University of Illinois College of Law
Associate Dean Catherine E. Smith	University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Dean Kent D. Syverud	Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Judge Deanell R. Tacha	U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
Dean Kellye Y. Testy	University of Washington School of Law
President David E. Van Zandt	The New School

3 judges, 2 working attorneys, and 13 current or former law school administrators.

Doesn't this seem a little imbalanced?

To be fair, some of the administrators, such as Larry Ribstein or Richard Matasar, are actually established in the field or on record as commenting on these issues. But many of them aren't, and it seems to me that letting someone like Dean Chemerinsky of all people serve as keynote speaker eradicates any objective, academic intent of the program. After all, this is a man running a manipulative scheme whose sole mission was to buy high LSAT scores to game the USNWR rankings.

In fact, three weeks ago, when I heard about this event, I emailed the University of Iowa Law Review expressing my detailed concerns on these exact points. After all, you would never host an honest symposium about the future of the automobile where almost all the participants are from Ford, GM, Exxon, Chevron, etc. Why do it for law?

Iowa Law Review has not even bothered to send me a response.

Let's hope some of the honest administrators and non-law school personnel make this a worthwhile event rather than the de facto advertising circus that the guest list would seem to suggest.

University of La Verne: A Different Kind of Misleading Advertising

The University of La Verne Law School (located in Ontario, California, and yes, I had to look it up, too) is trying again to bump it's "provisional" ABA accreditation to full ABA accreditation. The ABA's decision on their accreditation was delayed last year after only 34% of the graduating class passed the California bar exam on the first try. The school received provisional status in 2006 and the timeline is 5 years, so some are concerned that its time will expire and it won't be accredited, although it appears things are getting slightly better:

The exam pass rate for the same 2009 group rose to 73percent after students who had done poorly the first time retook the exam. These rates are called "ultimate" pass rates, which are also evaluated by the ABA. The 2010 first-time bar passage rate for graduating students at the law school reached 53percent.

Matt Jones, a first-year student at the law school, is among some first- and second-year students concerned about not being able to take the multi-state bar exam if they graduate at a school without ABA approval. Jones has nonetheless expressed satisfaction with the education he's receiving at the school, but he said the situation is a potential mess for many graduating with as much as $140,000 in debt.

This is a valid concern, isn't it? If you go to a school that's only provisionally accredited, you have one set of rights, but how many 0L's honestly realize that provisional accreditation expires? How many honestly realize that enrolling in a provisional school and graduating from a non-accredited school is a risk to take into account? Is the school upfront about this possible scenario?

Let's ask the Dean.

"They were told as graduates of provisional schools they're entitled to take the bar in all 50 states," [Dean Allen] Easley said. "The harder question is how much detail has gone into conversations with individuals about what would happen if the school loses its provisional status before they graduate. That gets to a level of detail you're not going to get into every single conversation. Certainly if anyone were to ask what were to happen if the school lost provisional approval before graduation, they would get an accurate answer. ... I don't think that question always gets asked."

Law school is a major investment of capital. The entire premise of our federal investment laws are that individuals should be fully apprised of the risks of an investment, especially the risks that have high acquisition costs (like trying to figure out the ABA's rules on accreditation).

And yet, this law school - a six-figure investment over three years - apparently only tells people "an accurate answer" of what would happen if they lose provisional status in the rare event that that person actually asks the question. Such a situation is blatantly contrary to the last 80 years of revelations about investment regulation, and it's also seemingly counter to common law contract principles (e.g., duty to disclose latent home defects).

Personally, I don't think the ABA should be accrediting schools where only ~50% of the class passes the bar exam, but that's just me. I just think the school has a duty to be entirely up front about their accreditation status, including the chance that they'll lose provisional accreditation.

But don't worry, kids, Dean Easley has a plan in case the ABA bucks a trend and actually rejects the school:

If a denial occurs, Easley said the law school would initiate an expedited application process to regain provisional status. He said recent precedent placed that process at about eight months.

"I think there's a good chance (for approval)," Easley said. "I believe we meet all the standards, but it's not my decision. The council is charged with making that decision. I hope we will get full approval and I believe we should."

Well, Dean Easley, you may meet the ABA's standards, but you don't meet mine, and you certainly weren't meeting your duty to prospective students if you weren't being entirely up front in disclosing that the school may lose accreditation.

Grand Rapids Enjoying The Thomas Cooley Bubble

Did you know that:

• Law school is merely a "supplementary" education?
• There are people who fly in from San Francisco to attend Thomas Cooley on the weekends because it's that gosh-darned good of a school with its flexible schedule and other amenities?
• Downtown Grand Rapids "sort-of looks like Brooklyn" and would be familiar and cozy to students from Los Angeles and New York City?
  

Well, in case you didn't, you should watch Cooley Dean Nelson Miller's recent appearance on WOOD TV-8 and be enlightened.

You see, even though Grand Rapids is a dying city, Cooley Law School is proving to be an amazing source of prosperity:

Cooley Law School's campus in downtown Grand Rapids . . . started six years ago with just 18 students. Today, nearly 750 people study for their law degree on the school's campus.

Some people even fly in for weekend classes, then fly home, spending money on hotels and downtown restaurants while in town.

If you watch the video, it's explicitly stated that the Dean is using the segment to recruit; there's not even a pretense of journalism. They actually say that they want the graduates to stick around (Grand Rapids needs 200 new lawyers every year? Really?), and the interviewer makes no effort to ask any questions of substance.

I hope the people of Grand Rapids enjoy their minor economic boom. They'll probably wind up paying for it later in one way or another.

And yes, Dean Miller really did say downtown Grand Rapids looks like Brooklyn.

On Advertising, Law School v. Medical School

When I run a simple google search for "medical school," I don't see any legitimate American medical schools advertising, not even for lower-regarded, lesser-known ones. The only advertisements I see are for places in the Caribbean (like this and this) or Mexico.

Even if they were allowed to (I'm not sure that they are), I'm not sure medical schools would advertise on the internet. They really have no need to.

But law schools? I wasn't surprised to see Thomas Jefferson advertising on this site, or St. Thomas advertising on other sites, but some of the following surprised me. Even when Thomas Jefferson advertises, it amazes me that they don't censor what articles their advertisements appear on better:


Extremely dignified, isn't it? Advertising on an article about law school being overpriced, right below the "sympathetic" family law people?

In case you cannot read it, the one on the lower right is Hofstra, a top 100 school; upper left is St. Thomas, a Catholic law school in Minnesota.

But if I had to guess who the real high-roller on google ads would be, it'd be Syracuse:

Yes, if you run a search for law schools near ARIZONA, Syracuse Law comes up. I'm pretty sure you have to pay quite a bit of last year's tuition money to get a placement so absurd.

If salaries really were in the stratosphere and being a lawyer really was the cat's meow, would school really have to take such steps of desperation, the same routes as countless "get-your-degree-now!" places?

You expect cheap ads from lawyers trying to pull in mesothelioma clients or pushing for father's rights, but for law school?

That's some pathetic, desperate penny stock advertising for a $100k+ investment that alleges a high rate of return. Medical schools don't (and don't have to) do this.

Just some food for thought.