Cooley Sues Kurzon Strauss and Joe Does, Streissand Effect in 3, 2, 1...

Thomas Cooley has filed a lawsuit against the law firm claiming to investigate it and another one against four John Doe bloggers for defamation and tortious interference. The complaints are linked from the comments; I'm currently having technical difficulties getting them to work on here.

The John Does

The four John Doe bloggers are "Rockstar5," "Informant," "Anonymous," and "Ch. Burns." They're seeking discovery of the identities behind the IP addresses.

John Doe 1, a.k.a. Rockstar 5, is the author of The Thomas Cooley Law School Scam, which I believe Nando might link to on Third Tier Reality. Cooley believes that John Doe has defamed Cooley by calling them "criminals" who engage in "fraud" to "lure" in/retain students, and by alleging that Cooley is "essentially a multi-million-dollar business."

John Doe 2, a.k.a. Informant, made a comment on John Doe 1's blog that accused Cooley of "using their students to make and create . . . securities that they can offer and sell to banks, student loan serviers, guaranty agencies, investment banks, and institutional investors" and that Cooley employees are actually agents of the financial industry.

John Doe 3, a.k.a. Anonymous, left a comment on John Doe 1's blog that claimed a multi-year investigation into Cooley's practices revealed that Cooley undertakes a variety of unscrupulous practices as part of an elaborate student loan fraud, similar to what John Doe 2 wrote.

John Doe 4, a.k.a Ch. Burns (Monty?), left a comment on the HuffPost alleging that Cooley was under investigation for serious title IV violations (I believe this has been reported by others previously).

Damages? A full tuition payment from each. Just kidding, but not quite: they ask for a minimum $25k on each count from each, or $50k total from each individual defendant (to be fair, I think it's the threshold to get into that court).

Personally, I don't think Thomas Cooley is involved in what the John Does allege. I don't think they're racketeering or in bed with the bankers in an elaborate scheme. Nor do I think Cooley's faculty are double agents or any other such nonsense. I do think they're analogous to a multi-million dollar for-profit corporation, but really no more than any other large university.

On one hand, I can't blame Thomas Cooley for filing this suit where people are making crazy false allegations against them.

But on the other, what in God's name do they expect to come from it? If these bloggers' IDs are revealed, and it turns out that they are Cooley graduates, how is THAT going to make the school look? How does it make the institution look when they feel like they actually have to respond to such nonsense? And what damages do they expect to come from it when these individuals are likely random internet bums (like myself)?

Granted, they did not go all-out Rakofsky mode. They refrained from including everyone saying bad things about them (like yours truly, who has expressed his opinions on their advertising, justifications for flooding the market, etc.), but how the Streissand Effect not going to kick in here?

They just took a giant spotlight and shined it on some very low-rent, unadvertised internet backwater. Now they risk ridicule, broader inquiry into their behavior, and repelling students by the fact that they were the law school that sued some random idiots. And for what? $200,000k in supposed damages? Isn't their reputational harm going to be much greater than that anything they can collect if they carry on this litigation, especially if it's against their own students/graduates? And discovery. Does Cooley really want to risk going having its administrators deposed with what they've alleged?

Celebrities and large institutions would be wise to ignore random blog postings that very, very few people give any credibility to anyway. And of course, in Cooley's case, the biggest dent in their reputation comes from the protected opinions of, well, a lot of people, including most of the people who do legal hiring.

Kurzon Strauss
As for Kurzon Strauss, I wouldn't be surprised if KS counterclaimed somehow. It seems KS has been making posts as part of an investigation into Thomas Cooley's employment statistics and possible consumer fraud claims, what Cooley's complaint calls "a wide-ranging defamatory campaign" that is "tortious and unethical." KS had made a post on JD Underground with factual allegations re: the employment numbers and loan defaults, after which Cooley sent them a cease and desist letter and KS retracted the statements.

But then, Cooley says, KS continued its defamation/false light/etc. by posting a draft class action complaint, again reiterating its false allegations and violating attorney ethics codes. And then they posted ads on Craigslist looking for Cooley graduates (the complaint lists New York and Detroit; I saw one on Chicago's a few days ago).

Four counts, $25,000 minimum each. I have to imagine KS is going to fight this tooth and nail - maybe even welcomed it, I don't know. If they bring up truth as a defense, discovery might be a very interesting process.

Again, one has to wonder if it's really worth it for Cooley. You just sent out an email to all your students that this firm has been investigating you for fraud. Who do you think disgruntled Cooley students are going to call? Think about it: the law firm was trying to reach the very group you just sent this email to.

Conclusion
Look, I doubt we'll see resolution to any of this any time soon, but my gut reaction is that these things couldn't have been causing the damage Cooley alleges, at least not any more than the mass of Constitutionally-protected speech that has proclaimed Cooley the worst law school in America.

As a final pussy legal disclaimer, I'd like to note that I know absolutely nothing about what goes on at any school I discuss, nor do I ever get "inside info," nor do I think any law school is engaged in what a lay person would call criminal activity. I merely give my opinions and commentary on publicly-available information.

News Roundup: Virtech Paralegal, Suing McDonalds, Debt Collections, and Merry Christmas!

Our first item up today is Virtech Paralegal, a company based out of Dallas that seeks to reduce economies-of-scale advantages held by bigger law firms by making it easier for solo practitioners and small firms to access paralegal services and organizational software. I saw this today about the company:

Last month, Virtech landed its first private financing – $500,000 from a local angel investor group – for marketing and to hire up to 40 people, said Brandon Lloyd, co-founder and chief operating officer of Virtech. Almost all of Virtech's nearly 20 clients are sole practitioners, he said.
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Beyond its recent angel financing, Virtech plans to raise $2.5 million in a private stock offering to expand to new markets, enhance its software and hire more staff, officials said.
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First Virtech plans to expand its paralegal service to Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and to other states, starting with California next year, Brown said.

Now, I don't think this company's model is going to revolutionize the legal industry or bring BigLaw to its knees or anything like that, but that's a lot of financing and a lot of planned growth for a young company. Reading between the lines, I'm guessing that their numbers are very good for them to nab to 500k and then turn around and discuss a stock offering for five times as much, with expansion to other markets within two years. Either these people are expansion/credit-crazy to a fault and their business will come crashing down faster than a housing bubble eating Krispy Kremes, or their model is showing some very good returns thus far and proving itself better than whatever else is out there. My gut says the latter and that this is a situation to watch in lowering costs for private practitioners.

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Our next item up is McDonalds and yet another example of someone taking products liability/tort/trade practices/etc. theories obviously too far. I don't think this really needs comment:

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is representing the mother of a six-year-old girl in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all California children under the age of eight who have been exposed to McDonald's "inherently deceptive and unfair" marketing in the last three years. The suit claims that McDonald's has "engaged in a highly sophisticated scheme to use the bait of toys to exploit children's developmental immaturity and subvert parental authority" and that arguments over Happy Meals have caused "needless and unwarranted dissension in their parent-child relationship."

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Our third item is debt collectors. For the uninformed, the FTC has passed through a number of changes in debt collection law in the wake of the omnibus financial reform that took place last year, specifically to target deceptive practices. But as with all things where laws cannot cover the full gamut of clever means to the ultimate end, Creditbloggers reports that debt collectors are finding novel solutions. This one struck me in particular:

Another tactic: Pose as lawyers, who are exempted from the new rules. By setting themselves up as law firms, many debt resolution companies believe they can skirt the rules. But few consumers actually get to speak to a real lawyer, according to the letter, and if they do, the lawyer is usually not licensed to practice law in their state.

I would hope there's no attorneys dumb enough to set up these firms that exist solely to evade the law and perform what seems to me to be the unauthorized practice of the law, but I'm sure we'll be seeing more stories on this in the future. There's too much money involved in debt collection - especially as joblessness continues - for there to not be entertaining shenanigans in the murky debt collection sector.

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The fourth item is that I want to wish all my readers who celebrate it a Merry Christmas!