All The Cool Kids Are Passing The Bar, All The Cooley Kids... Not As Much

0:11Hey, and welcome back to another edition of Thinking Like a Lawyer. I'm Joe Patrice from Above the law. I'm joined by some above law colleagues. I've got Catherine here. And Chris Williams is here too. Hello. And, you know, we're doing the thing that we do every week where we talk about the big stories from the week that was, but we, as always, are going to begin with a little bit of small talk. Small talk. Yeah. So I'd like to start, of course, by wishing everyone a happy Life of a Showgirl week for those who celebrate. Oh my God, yeah. I don't know if you all are aware, but I did put it on our editorial calendar so that you can make sure that you have Friday kind of blocked off in your mind.

0:52I did see that it was on the editorial calendar and I wondered. You did not wonder who did that. Correct, I did not wonder who. We all knew it was me because yesterday yesterday i went to go see um demon slayer infinity castle which was which was great um it was it felt like six to eight anime episodes back to back to back to back to back but anyway other than that it was nice but as i'm waiting on the bus i see this giant banner in front of me that's basically like katham's going to be out from the third to the fifth so i was like okay well thank you for telling me billboard but yeah it looked it looked nice it's giving more cabaret that I was expecting from Taylor Swift.

1:36I think it's definitely a big vibe shift for sure, especially coming off of the Tortured Poets department, which is a very long, I think it has some real gems on it, but it much more of a meandering kind of word vomit kind of vibe to it. This one is much shorter. It's going to clock in at under 43 minutes. They just on Spotify put out the length of the album and, you know, it's going to be a lot more poppy from everything we know, a lot tighter as an album. And the best part is I was already taking Friday off. Like months ago, I have a girls trip planned at some college friends. So I was already going to be out Friday.

2:14And now I'm like, well, now we have something else to do as we explore Charleston is to delve deeply into the album. Yeah, I was going to say, oh, this might upend the girls trip. But, you know, because priorities. priority people. Well, you know, there's also the Life of Showgirl movie that's being released in AMC theaters. And as soon as I heard it, I waited on a 45-minute online line in order to get tickets for the entire group of us that are going out. And then I found out that there are no AMC theaters in Charleston. There you go. Which was very sad for me. And it's only going to be released for that weekend.

2:56So I can't actually watch it. I mean, hopefully eventually it'll be released on something like Disney Plus or which we can watch now again. So hopefully it'll be released. I will be able to watch it at some point. But it was a little shocking to me that you can't go to an AMC theater in Charleston. Wait, it sounds like you're putting the cart before the show, girl. How did you buy the tickets for the for the movie? And then I went to go buy them and they were like, where do you what theater do you want? And I was like, Charleston, South Carolina. And nothing came up. And I was like, that can't be right.

3:28Gotcha. So you waited in line to discover that you couldn't buy the tickets. Correct. I waited in line and then I figured it out. I thought you just had like... You know, listen, my faith in antitrust law at this point is so low that I just assumed everyone had an AMC theater. So I... Yeah. Good job making it legal. You're welcome, Joe. I did that just for you. Well, again, small talk is theoretically supposed to be... A reminder, Joe, small talk doesn't have to be legal. in fairness it kind of the original theory behind it was you know given that the name of the show is thinking like a lawyer a lot a lot of the logic was that we would inject legal into our day-to-day lives and that was well that is a real injection of legal into our day-to-day lives which is that apparently uh it is amc is not nearly as ubiquitous as someone living on the east coast of this country would think.

4:18Yeah. Well, all right. Cool. Oh, that sounds, means that we're done with small talk and we can move on. What is our biggest story of the week? I guess the biggest story of the week, this is one that, for those of you who haven't been long time above the law readers, you might not understand why this is the biggest story of the week, but it is definitely digging into kind of the old school above the law lore. Cooley Law School in Michigan has now gotten in trouble with the ABA. Yeah, their bar passage rate over the last few years is below the threshold that the ABA sets for compliance with their accreditation standards.

5:04So they are on probation while they hopefully work to improve their bar passage rate. Yeah. So yeah, the ABA requires, in those states where the ABA accredits law schools, which is supposed to be all of them. But currently, there is a right wing push in states like Florida, and now in Tennessee to kick the and I think Texas is also looking at it to kick the ABA out of that job in those states, because the ABA is, you know, woke monsters or whatever the current well, they care a lot about the rule of law. So yeah, all of that. So they're they're on the outs. So they require you to your graduates to to be accredited, your graduates have have to eventually pass the bar within a certain window, a certain percent there below it.

5:51Now, here's how this plays into the old school lore. Now, years ago, there was a ranking of law schools that ranked Harvard as the best law school in the country, which... Sure, that checks out. I mean, you know, it's on a short list of options. I think that Harvard, Yale, Stanford, all, you know, valid options as the top law school. That sounds right. Yeah. So then in second place in this ranking was Cooley. Ooh. Yeah. So it's interesting when you get into the – Was the joke at the time? No. So they very sincerely said that Cooley was the number two law school. Now, this ranking was commissioned by Cooley, which I do love that they had the restraint to not put themselves as one in the poll that they created themselves.

6:41But it was just sort of ridiculous. Given where they were coming from, if they'd placed themselves 15, it would have been a ridiculous coup for them. But they couldn't help themselves, made themselves two. They received quite a bit of a burn from us here. and then it kind of just continued from there. Even after this ranking went away, Above the Law kept on this law school and its suspicious efforts to promote itself. It involved, you know, it constantly was getting pushback from the ABA. This is not the first time they've had run-ins with the ABA. They sued the ABA at one point to prevent the ABA from punishing them for some of their failings.

7:28They tried to merge. They did some sort of a merger with Western Michigan in order to get some to help their reputation. This is an ongoing situation with Cooley. They have been like this for a really long time. And it's kind of sad because there was a day where Cooley was a perfectly acceptable regional law school. And they just it's almost like they with that right right around with that ranking, they decided to reach for the stars and it just started a whole crumbling. But, you know, just just to be clear, just to be clear, you said that they sued the ABA. They lost that suit, presumably. I think settled.

8:08I think they, yeah, I think they gave up. They hired Paul Clement, like a bunch of failing law schools hired Paul Clement to make the argument that it was, you know, illegal for the ABA to tell law schools that they aren't good enough. And yeah. Well, that's not a win, but it's win-adjacent. There was a whole issue because ABA doesn't necessarily have the coffers in order to do a lot of protracted litigation. That's not sort of the way that its funding was set up. And I think we actually wrote about it at the time, too, that that is the problem, that the accreditation is not set up in order to defend itself.

8:48And that's a real problem. And, you know, part of the other reason why I think Cooley became a punching bag for above the law is that it really, you know, was that kind of self-motivated aggrandizement, but really had a blind eye to the sort of other side of it. right they're asking students to pay a lot of money to go into a lot of debt uh in order to to get their degree and the the point of it is to be able to practice to be able to pay off your loans at some point so you're not constantly in this debt right and if you can't pass the bar it makes it really hard you can't get a job that allows you to service those loans that is just the real problem it makes it real hard yeah and and turning a blind eye to that hardship that too many of their students were put in a position at the end of it and still are based on the numbers and why they're currently suspended, I think is a real problem.

9:49Yeah. So they're in trouble again. Who knows what's going to happen? Given the knocks that the ABA is taking from the federal government right now, I assume Cooley will appeal to them. Cooley's most famous graduate, by the way, was Michael Cohen, the former Trump fixer. So maybe they won't be able to appeal to the administration. Well, they're certainly not. They can't use their most famous graduate to do it at this point. They would have. Wasn't there also a very famous Cooley law grad who is an NHL coach? Yes, that is correct. Actually, they're arguably more famous in some ways, but not certainly for practicing law.

10:26But the Tampa Bay Lightning's coach is a Cooley law grad who. Also, just a just a quick intervention for any practicing folks listening who happen to be Indian. It is C-O-O-L-E-Y. Yeah. Because it's just weird to hear Cooley knowing that that's a slur. You're like, no, no, no, not that Cooley, not that Cooley. I mean, yeah, but I would think that's also a lot. There is also an unrelated law firm with that name, and this is the law school. The law firm is not related. Gotcha, gotcha. Anyway, that was a thing that I did wonder at one point. I was like, not that I figured they were financially related, But, you know, you thought maybe they're named after the same people or whatever, but I don't believe that they are.

11:08OK, so we have a new update in the Surrendergate discussion, Paul Weiss and Kirkland in particular. So among the nine firms who settled with the federal government to give them pro bono payola to get out of their, you know, retaliatory executive orders, the two of them, Paul Weiss and Kirkland, both in the initial request by legislators to explain why this was not a breach of a bunch of professional obligation rules. In that initial conversation with legislators, they took the position that they're just working with some charities and it's no big deal and they have total control of what's going on and it's fine.

11:49We then later learned that those two firms, that two firms in particular, Paul Weiss and Kirkland, were working with the Commerce Department for free, doing tariff work for free for the government, which certainly complies with some of the stuff the Trump administration had been saying, that they believed that these deals comprised their ability to deputize these firms to do legal work. But, you know, in their initial letters to Congress, they said that wasn't what they were going to do, but now they are doing it. The new shoe that has dropped is those legislators have come back and been, well, now, if that's the case, why don't you explain how you're not breaking the law here?

12:30Not so much that the firms are breaking the law, to be clear. They're violating the statute, but the penalty runs to the government. The government is forbidden by statute from taking free legal services. They're forbidden from taking any free services unless there is a life-threatening situation. So in the event of FEMA or something like that, that you need to immediately respond to an emergency, they can take free services. But otherwise, they are not allowed to do that. There's a lot of reasons for that. It kind of undermines budgeting. It opens the door to lots of quid pro quo corruption stuff.

13:07There's a reason we have this law. That said, no one seems to have bothered to look up this law before they started giving free legal services. Yeah, that's not a great look for the firms involved. That's not a great look for the government. Not surprising, perhaps, given the entire way that those deals got negotiated and went down. It also kind of makes you wonder what exactly they think that pro bono slush fund is going to be used for. Right. Well, I mean, originally they said we think it'll be fulfilled by us doing this charitable work for veterans organizations and stuff like that. And there was a little bit of – we'd crossed a threshold where, after a bunch of defections had already happened, where we'd started to see these people respond to – these stories percolate, which whenever a story like this comes out, they're not the source of it, but you kind of think, are they the source of it?

14:09Who is the source of this? Some stories percolate that, oh, you know, all these firms aren't really doing anything. thing. They don't really consider this deal to be serious. So it's OK. We're fine. We're not really working for the administration, which, you know, query whether or not that was disingenuous. But that was that was what they were doing until this Commerce Department stuff came out. Yeah, it's a little the whole thing is a little shady, exactly how these hours or dollar amounts are going to be fulfilled, whether they'll be fulfilled, whether just hoping to like wait it out whether or not what work they think they're doing that satisfies this will be accepted by the government by the Trump administration as actually fulfilling it whether or not the Trump administration can or will try to call on specific firms to do certain legal work certainly the Trump administration thinks that they can do that you know and has written as such in an executive order exactly They said that they expected that some of these hours would be taken up by firms defending police officers accused of violence.

15:18So they certainly think that that's how it will be used. Firms who have signed these deals haven't said what they think necessarily. And I mean, certainly I can't imagine they would say what they think because that just opens them up to all sorts of retribution again from the federal government. And the whole purpose of these these deals was to avoid said retribution. So I think they're going to keep their mouths well and good shut unless forced to by Congress. Yeah. And again, they won't be forced to because, as you might imagine, when I say the legislators are asking, It's only the Democrats on the various justice committees, judiciary committees asking.

15:58They're not getting any help from the actual majority. The thing that struck me was just imagining somebody who came out of retirement to tell their prior firm, hey, you can't do this. You know, because the person that took them off was retired, but used to work at one of the firms. Well, no, no, no. So the I think you're talking about in in my thing, the the a person who reached out to us was a retired attorney, not from necessarily one of the firms, but. Oh, still. Yeah. Yeah. But he reached out to above the law as soon as these the story about the Commerce Department happened. He's he said, you know, I haven't practiced in a long time, but are you aware of this statute?

16:39And I had never heard of that statute before, but yeah, he pointed it out to me and I looked it up. And then I started reaching out to, you know, various academics in the administrative law space and going, have you heard of this? And, you know, ultimately, apparently some people in Congress learned about it, too. So so shout out to his ball knowledge. Yeah. It's one of those things where like, really, if you knew, you knew like it wasn't like it wasn't like the Sherman Act, like not everybody knew. Exactly. Exactly. Have we concluded this topic? I mean, I think that this is more than anything a pin in this topic.

17:18Oh, good point. Temporarily. Yeah, because whether or not anything actually happens with this particular instance of them fulfilling their pro bono hours for the administration, I think that we're going to be talking about this for a lot of, frankly, years to come. And I think that there is a long-term reputational hit that these firms have taken, and I've talked about that a lot. But I think that doing work that potentially violates a statute also really reflects poorly on them, not just that they are they sign these deals, which, you know, we've talked about as an act of cowardice and yada, yada, yada.

17:54But doing something that potentially pretty obviously, I think, violates a statute without be seemingly being aware of that fact also doesn't look good as an attorney. Yeah, I haven't seen a response to these letters yet. I'm intrigued to see what their take is going to be. It'll be interesting. All right. Well, this one's still in a bit of flux, but we had some drama in the Eastern District of Virginia. So we had a Trump person in the U.S. attorney's office there. Trump asked the Department of Justice and this particular U.S. attorney to indict James Comey. This this U.S. attorney acting or interim or whatever, U.S.

18:42attorney did not do that because there was not, you know, any evidence of any crime that Comey had committed. So Trump had that person removed, replaced with Lindsey Halligan, who is an insurance lawyer and former beauty pageant contestant who Trump has brought into the White House because she was one of the people who was willing to – in Florida, who was willing to sign off on his idea that him having nuclear codes in his toilet was okay. uh so she is now in that job she has never done any criminal law whatsoever uh the they have secured uh two out of three count indictment uh that managed to get from a grand jury that said the judge is still trying to untangle it because it appears as though halligan signed the wrong forms uh you know just just what you would expect from somebody who doesn't know what they're doing Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot going on here.

19:41First of all, the career prosecutor that got drummed out because he refused to sign off on these charges against Comey was not just because of the Comey thing. There was also he was also asked to find charges against Tish James, the New York attorney general, another sort of perpetual thorn in the side of Donald Trump and also said that there isn't stuff there. Part of the reason why he was forced out. So there's that kind of going on as well, that it's not just this kind of singular instance, but, you know, a find find charges against my enemies vibe going on, which I think is super problematic.

20:23It would be less troubling if it was a single sort of political enemy than we are going after political enemies generally. But it does feel like there is a real rush here at the end. And I think part of that is that the statute of limitations is close to running on. So some of the charges that they are potentially getting the indictment on is making false statements to Congress based on some Comey testimony. And that is that the statute on that charges is set to expire. So they needed to kind of get it in under the wire before they couldn't anymore. Right. Yeah. No. And it's just the level of incompetence.

21:06That's really what's striking about this runaround. In the previous administration, they they staffed largely with people who were competent. You say what you will about Bill Barr's worldview. He knew how to lawyer. This is now just turn things over to people who barely understand what they're doing. And it shows. I mean, the transcript that was released from the initial Comey hearing is embarrassing, right? It's stuff like the judge saying, well, I have one form here that has three charges. I don't know. But there's only two on this other form, charges on this other form. What's going on with this first form with three charges?

21:50Lindsay saying, I've never seen that before in my life. And the judge responding, well, your signature is on it. Right. Right? Like really embarrassing kinds of stuff that for any competent attorney who cared about their professional reputation in the law, as opposed to just as a political operative would be devastating. Yeah. Right? Regardless of whatever kind of punishment a court can or cannot dole out would be personally devastating to them if a judge was able to call you out that plainly, it open, recorded court. Yeah. But that's, they don't seem to care. Remember when they were draining the swamp and getting rid of DEI because Jesse, listening, I mean, Kataji Brown Jackson wasn't qualified enough in stuff like this.

22:42Yeah. Now, this is still a government person in government, but it is a little different. I think it was someone involved in, I think, appointed to a position in ICE, and she was asked what her qualifications were. Oh, yeah, the deputy of ICE. And her answer was, well, who's really qualified for anything? Yeah. Yeah, the 28-year-old or whatever who's got that deputy job over at Homeland. Homeland Security, yeah. responded that yeah what does it really mean to be qualified at all what is qualifications yeah so like it is it feels it feels wholesome and also old-timey to imagine shame over not being competent we've moved far past that like once big balls was in the government we moved past shame i hear what you're saying and i do think you're you're not wrong chris but i i think that there's another sort of bridge further when it's, listen, I don't want to necessarily idolize the legal profession, but there is a sort of a professional obligation that we're meant to have their oaths that lawyers take, right?

23:43That is supposed to make it a little bit harder to be a pure political operative, completely divorced from the rule of law. Well, this also all began, the Justice department has long enjoyed a degree of independence from the rest of the executive branch. You know, you see it like despite right wingers complaining about, well, this is just what Biden did. The all the reports are that Biden privately complained that Garland wasn't moving faster on any of these cases. But you know what he didn't do? Call Garland and say, do this now or I'm going to fire you because, you know, whatever, like, say, posting a truth social DM accidentally to everybody telling your attorney general to start pressing charges, which is another thing that happened and then got deleted.

24:33So it's an incompetence. It's an inevitable result of the breaking down of that wall between the Justice Department and the rest of the executive branch. It's something that we could tell was on its way when the department was described initially by Bondi as Trump's personal legal department, which was a sign of where we were going. Yeah. And this is just sort of the latest and perhaps most egregious, but it didn't. Right. I think you're right. It doesn't come from zero. There's the Bondi statements about it being, you know, Trump's personal law firm, but also the way that they dealt with the Eric Adams situation in New York, forcing functionally forcing career prosecutors out of the office because they wouldn't do what they what the administration wanted, which is to drop the charges against somebody they saw as a political ally.

25:25Yeah, this is not going to end with that. There's this not like we have so much shame where this is it. This is this is the end of the road. I think that they're going to continue. I don't think that Tish James is necessarily safe, even though charges haven't currently been brought against her. I think that anybody who catches Trump's ire should have an attorney on speed dial. Yeah. Well, all right. With that all said, then, I think we're done. This Comey thing is still rapidly developing. I think the statute of limitations is going to happen real quick and we'll see what happens. Obviously, they've got an indictment, maybe, depending on all this signature stuff.

26:10So we'll see. thanks everybody for listening you should check out the you know you should subscribe the show to get episodes as they come out you should leave reviews and all you should be listening to other shows the jabot is katherine's other podcast i'm a guest on the legal tech week journalist round table you should be listening to other shows on the legal talk network you should be reading above the law so they read these and other stories before they reach this conversation uh social media. It's abovelaw.com over at Blue Sky. I'm at Joe Patrice. She's at Catherine One. Chris is at Rights for Rent.

26:45And yeah. Peace. Bye. Peace.