MacDonald et al v. Thomas M. Cooley Law School

Filing 1

COMPLAINT with jury demand against All Defendants filed by Shawn Haff, Chelsea Pejic, John T MacDonald, Steve Barron (Attachments: # 1 Summons)(Hyder, Steven)

Steven Hyder (P69875)
The Hyder Law Firm, P.C.
PO Box 2242
Monroe, MI 48161
[e-mail]
Phone [phone]

David Anziska
Jeff Kurzon
Jesse Strauss (admission pending)
Kurzon Strauss LLP
305 Broadway, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10007
Phone [phone]
Facsimile [phone]
www.KurzonStrauss.com
Counsel for Plaintiffs, individually
and for all others similarly situated

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN

JOHN T. MACDONALD JR., CHELSEA
A. PEJIC, SHAWN HAFF,
and STEVEN BARON, on behalf
of themselves and all
others similarly situated,
Plaintiffs,
v.
THOMAS M. COOLEY LAW SCHOOL,
and DOES 1-20,
Defendants.

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Case No._____

CLASS ACTION COMPLAINT

JURY TRIAL DEMANDED

Plaintiffs, acting for themselves and for all persons who currently attend or graduated
from the Thomas M. Cooley Law School during the relevant time period (collectively
“Plaintiffs”), allege as follows. Plaintiffs‟ allegations are based on the investigation of counsel,
including but not limited to reviews of advertising and marketing material, various publicly
available information and interviews of former students, and are thus made on information and
belief, except as to individual actions of Plaintiffs, as to which Plaintiffs have personal
knowledge.
PRELIMINARY STATEME NT
“Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant” – Justice Louis Brandeis
1.

This action seeks to remedy a systemic, ongoing fraud that is ubiquitous in the

legal education industry and threatens to leave a generation of law students in dire financial
straits. Essentially, Plaintiffs want to bring an element of “sunlight” or transparency to the way
law schools report post-graduate employment data and salary information, by requiring that they
make critical, material disclosures that will give both prospective and current students a more
accurate picture of their post-graduate financial situation, as opposed to the status quo where law
schools are incentivized to engage in all sorts of legerdemain when tabulating employment
statistics.
2.

Churning out nearly 1,000 newly-minted JD graduates each year, the Thomas M.

Cooley School of Law (“Thomas Cooley” or “Defendants”) is by far the largest law school in the
country with approximately 4,000 students spread out across four campuses, the overwhelming
majority of whom -- 82 percent -- are enrolled on a part-time basis. Indeed, Thomas Cooley‟s
enormous class size and diverse student body is a point of pride for the school, which expressly
markets itself as being “committed to providing a legal education to people from all walks of

1

life.” To that end, Thomas Cooley in its Mission Statement represents that its underlying
purpose is to “prepare its graduates for entry into the legal profession through an integrated
program with practical legal scholarship as its guiding principle and focus,” by imbuing them
with the requisite skills and knowledge “needed to be a success in the law and a valuable
member of society.”
3.

Unfortunately, in reality, far from preparing its many, many students for entry

into the legal profession and imbuing them with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in
law, the school consigns most of them to years of indentured servitude, saddling them with tens
of thousands of dollars in crushing, non-dischargeable debt that will take literally decades to pay
off. The school has done this while blatantly misrepresenting and manipulating its employment
statistics to prospective students, employing the type of “Enron-style” accounting techniques that
would leave most for-profit companies facing the long barrel of a government investigation and
the prospect of paying a substantial civil fine. These deceptions are perpetuated so as to prevent
prospective students from realizing the obvious -- that attending Thomas Cooley and forking
over nearly $100,000 in tuition payments is a terrible investment which makes little economic
sense and, most likely, will never pay off.
4.

Specifically, Thomas Cooley, through both its print and internet marketing

materials, commits two basic written, uniform misrepresentations. First, the school during the
class period claims that a substantial majority of its graduates -- roughly between 75 and 80
percent -- secure employment within nine months of graduation. However, the reality of the
situation is that these seemingly robust numbers include any type of employment, including jobs
that have absolutely nothing to do with the legal industry, do not require a JD degree or are
temporary or part-time in nature. Rather, if Thomas Cooley was to disclose the more pertinent

2

employment statistic -- i.e. those graduates who have secured full-time, permanent positions for
which a JD degree is required or preferred -- the numbers would drop dramatically, and could be
well below 30 percent, if not even lower.
5.

Second, Thomas Cooley grossly inflates its graduates‟ reported mean salaries, by

calculating them based on a small, mostly self-selected subset of graduates who actually submit
their salary information. If the Defendants were to disclose salary data based on a broad,
statistically meaningful representation of its graduates, by including more graduates who have
failed to secure full-time, permanent employment, the reported mean salaries would decline
precipitously. 1
6.

Defendants‟ deceptions are all the more shocking considering that they are being

perpetuated on naïve, relatively unsophisticated consumers -- many of whom are barely removed
from college -- who are often making their first “big-ticket” purchase. These students tend to
apply to law school with one objective in mind: to attain the kind of job that provides the
compensation and lifestyle that are commensurate with and worthy of the enormous time, money
and personal sacrifice invested in a legal education.
7.

Compounding problems, there is no place where prospective students can find

Thomas Cooley‟s “real” employment numbers. Indeed, the school supplies the same dubious
statistics to the U.S. News & World Report (“US News”) and the American Bar Association
(“ABA”), the two primary sources of information for law school employment data. Like
1

True to its past patterns and practices of lashing out at critics and tolerating absolutely
zero dissent, Thomas Cooley, in a crude, cynical attempt to intimidate potential plaintiffs, chill
free speech and police the Internet, has filed two sham, SLAPP lawsuits in Michigan State court
against Plaintiffs‟ Counsel, Kurzon Strauss LLP (“Kurzon Strauss”), and its attorneys David
Anziska and Jesse Strauss, and four “John Doe” plaintiffs for alleged defamatory statements
made over the Internet. Needless to say, these lawsuits have been met with near universal
derision, engendering a strong backlash in both the press and the legal community, and are
deficient on both procedural and substantive grounds.
3

Thomas Cooley, these sources count as “employed” those who have secured employment in any
capacity in any kind of job, no matter how unrelated to the legal field.
8.

By playing fast and loose with its employment data, Thomas Cooley creates an

impression of bountiful employment opportunity that in reality does not exist. This problem has
grown more acute since the onset of the “Great Recession” in 2008. The stark reality of the
situation is that law students today face the grimmest job market in decades. Yet Thomas
Cooley, instead of telling the sobering truth to prospective and current students, continues to
make the fantastical claim that the overwhelming majority of its graduates are gainfully
employed.
9.

Worse yet, Thomas Cooley deceives its students while saddling them with tens of

thousands of dollars in crushing, non-dischargeable debt. According to US News, Thomas
Cooley students graduate on average with a whopping $105,798 in loans, with over 90 percent of
them assuming debt to attend the school. The current annual tuition for full-time students at
Thomas Cooley is $30,644 and $19,714 for part-time students, excluding thousands of dollars in
living expenses, making it one of the more expense law schools in the country, despite the fact
that it is ranked in the fourth or bottom tier by the U.S. News in its annual law school rankings.
10.

Unfortunately, Thomas Cooley‟s false and fraudulent representations and

omissions are endemic in the law school industry, as nearly every school to a certain degree
blatantly manipulates their employment data to make themselves more attractive to prospective
students. It is a dirty industry secret that law schools employ a variety of deceptive practices
and accounting legerdemain to “pretty up” or “cook” the job numbers, including, among other
things, hiring recent unemployed graduates as “research assistants” or providing them with
“public interest” stipends so as to classify them as employed, excluding graduates who do not

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supply employment information from employment surveys, refusing to categorize unemployed
graduates who are not “actively” seeking employment as unemployed and classifying graduates
who have only secured temporary, part-time employment as being “fully” employed.
11.

Thus, the law school industry today is much like a game of three-card monte, with

law schools flipping ace after ace, while a phalanx of non-suspecting players wager mostly
borrowed money based on asymmetrical information on a game few of them can win. To a
remarkable extent, law schools have been astonishingly successful in carrying out this scheme.
Last year law schools awarded over 43,000 JD degrees, an increase of 11 percent from a decade
earlier, while law school tuition over the past two decades has risen exponentially, far exceeding
both inflation and any increase in attorneys‟ starting salaries. Not surprisingly, the debt burden
of law school graduates has risen correspondingly, and the average debt burden for graduates of
private institutions is now over $100,000.
12.

The dramatic increase in law school tuition has dovetailed with the dramatic

increase in faculty compensation. Law school professors and deans are perhaps the best
remunerated in academia today, enjoying both lavish perks and exorbitant salaries that rival
those of Fortune 500 executives. For example, during the fiscal year of 2008-2009, Thomas
Cooley dean, Don LeDuc, earned a staggering $548,047 in total compensation, making him one
of the highest paid law school deans in the country, while retired dean and school founder,
Thomas Brennan, earned nearly $370,000 in total compensation.
13.

After much public hand-wringing and increased scrutiny, the legal profession has

finally begun to recognize the systemic fraud the law school industry has been perpetuating.
Senator Barbara Boxer of California and Senator Charles Grasserly of Iowa have each sent
separate letters to the President of the ABA, taking the organization to task for failing to properly

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police the law school industry. Additionally, a coalition of 55 law school student body
presidents have sent to Congress proposed legislation that would, among other things, create new
reporting standards for employment data, require law schools to submit annual employment
reports to the Department of Education (“DOE”), and empower the DOE to audit these reports.
The problem has grown so acute that even the President of the California Bar Association in a
much publicized article in the California Bar Journal openly implored law school deans to adopt
more rigorous reporting standards by disclosing the type of detailed employment and salary
information that would allow students to get a more realistic picture of their post-graduate
financial situation.
14.

These entreaties had fallen mostly on deaf ears until now, as the ABA‟s

committee on accrediting law schools has just recently enacted guidelines that would expressly
require law schools to report their true post-graduate employment rate, by disclosing the type of
information Plaintiffs are seeking here: the exact percentage of graduates who have obtained
permanent, full-time legal employment. Specifically, law schools will be required to break down
their employment data so as to indicate whether a position is full-time or part-time, permanent or
temporary, funded by the law school or an affiliated university, and whether bar passage or a JD
degree is required or preferred.
15.

Accordingly, Plaintiffs now seek to vindicate their interests through the court

system. This action asserts claims under: a) Michigan‟s Consumer Protection Act, MCLS
§445.901, et seq. (the “MCPA”); b) Fraud; and c) Negligent Misrepresentation. Plaintiffs seek
damages and equitable relief on behalf of the class, which includes but is not limited to the
following: refunding and reimbursing current and former students for tuition paid to Thomas
Cooley; an order enjoining Thomas Cooley from continuing to market its false and inaccurate

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employment data and salary information; an order requiring that Thomas Cooley retain a third
party to independently audit all employment and salary data; costs and expenses, including
attorneys‟ and experts‟ fees; and any additional relief that this Court determines to be necessary
or appropriate to provide complete relief to Plaintiffs and the class.
JURISDICTION AND VENUE
16.

This Court has original jurisdiction over this action under the Class Action

Fairness Act of 2005, 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(2)(“CAFA”), as to the named Plaintiffs and every
member of the Class, because the proposed Class contains more than 100 members, the
aggregate amount of controversy exceeds $5 million, less than two-thirds of the members reside
in Michigan, and members reside across the U.S. and are therefore diverse from the Defendants.
17.

The Court has personal jurisdiction in this action by virtue of the fact that

Defendants are based and headquartered in Michigan and have conducted business in Michigan.
18.

Venue is proper in this District pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1391(b) inasmuch as the

unlawful practices are alleged to have been committed in this District, Defendants regularly
conduct business in this District, including operating its flagship Lansing campus, and at least
some of the Plaintiffs reside in this District.
PARTIES
19.

John T. MacDonald Jr. is a practicing attorney in Lansing, Michigan who is

currently a member in good standing of the Michigan Bar. Prior to attending law school, Mr.
MacDonald was a commissioned Naval Officer who served for four years with distinction before
receiving an honorable discharge. Mr. MacDonald graduated from Thomas Cooley‟s Lansing
campus in 2010, and in total paid tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and fees to the school
while incurring tens of thousands of dollars more in debt. In applying and deciding to remain

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enrolled at Thomas Cooley, Mr. MacDonald relied on salary data and employment information
posted on Thomas Cooley‟s website and/or disseminated to third-party data clearinghouses and
publications, such as the ABA and US News. Following his graduation from law school, Mr.
MacDonald could not find full-time, permanent legal employment and was forced to open up his
own law firm which he currently still operates.
20.

Chelsea A. Pejic is a practicing attorney in Chicago, Illinois who is currently a

member in good standing of the Illinois Bar. Ms. Pejic graduated from Thomas Cooley‟s
Lansing campus in 2006, and in total paid tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and fees to the
school while incurring tens of thousands of dollars more in debt. In applying and deciding to
remain enrolled at Thomas Cooley, Ms. Pejic relied on salary data and employment information
posted on Thomas Cooley‟s website and/or disseminated to third-party data clearinghouses and
publications, such as the ABA and US News. Following her graduation from law school, Ms.
Pejic, despite circulating hundreds of resumes, could not obtain gainful legal employment and
was forced to endure a long bout of unemployment. She has also worked as a voluntary staff
attorney and a temporary contract attorney, while also operating for a brief period of time her
own firm.
21.

Shawn Haff is a practicing attorney in Grand Rapids, Michigan who is currently a

member in good standing of the Michigan Bar. Mr. Haff graduated from Thomas Cooley‟s
Grand Rapids campus in 2010, and in total paid tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and fees to
the school while incurring tens of thousands of dollars more in debt. In applying and deciding to
remain enrolled at Thomas Cooley, Mr. Haff relied on salary data and employment information
posted on Thomas Cooley‟s website and/or disseminated to third-party data clearinghouses and
publications, such as the ABA and US News. Following his graduation from law school, Mr.

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Haff could not find full-time, permanent legal employment and was forced to take temporary,
contract assignments reviewing documents in order to make ends meet. Currently, he owns and
operates his own law firm.
22.

Steven Baron currently resides in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from

Thomas Cooley‟s Lansing campus in 2008, and in total paid tens of thousands of dollars in
tuition and fees to the school while incurring tens of thousands of dollars more in debt. In
applying and deciding to remain enrolled at Thomas Cooley, Mr. Baron relied on salary data and
employment information posted on Thomas Cooley‟s website and/or disseminated to third-party
data clearinghouses and publications, such as the ABA and US News. Following his graduation
from law school, Mr. Baron, despite circulating hundreds of resumes, has been unable to obtain
any kind of sustained employment and is currently unemployed.
23.

Defendant Thomas Cooley is an ABA accredited law school and non-profit

corporation headquartered in Lansing, Michigan, but with satellite campuses also in Ann Arbor,
Auburn Hills and Grand Rapids. For the 2010-2011 academic year, it enrolled a total of 4,001
students, 82 percent of whom are matriculated on a part-time basis. The current annual tuition
for full-time students at Thomas Cooley is $30,644 and $19,714 for part-time students, bringing
its per-credit-hour cost to $1,093, while miscellaneous costs such as room, board and living
expenses are estimated to be an additional $14,686. According to its 2008-2009 IRS 990 form,
Thomas Cooley‟s total operating revenue is $96,478,621, including $96,091,697 in tuition fees,
and its total operating costs are $90,524,839, including $44,769,472 in monies paid out for
employees‟ salaries. For the fiscal year of 2008-2009, the school paid its dean, Don LeDuc,
$548,047 in total compensation, while still paying its former dean and school founder, Thomas

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Brennan, $368,581 in total compensation. Thomas Cooley‟s nine other highest paid employees
earned between $193,925 and $242,476 in total compensation.
24.

The true names and capacities (whether individual, corporate, associate or

otherwise) of Defendants Does 1 though 20, inclusive, are unknown to Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs sue
these Defendants by fictitious names and will seek leave to amend this Complaint after their
identities are learned. Each fictitious Defendant contributed to the acts and practices alleged
herein. Plaintiffs are informed and believe that the fictitiously named Defendants proximately
caused Plaintiffs‟ damages.
FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS
I.

Background Information
25.

Churning out nearly 1,000 newly-minted JD graduates each year, Thomas Cooley

is by far the largest law school in the country with approximately 4,000 students spread out
across four campuses, the overwhelming majority of whom -- 82 percent -- are enrolled on a
part-time basis. Just recently, on August 8, 2011, Thomas Cooley announced that it will be
opening a Tampa Bay-area campus in Riverview, Florida in May 2012 that can accommodate a
planned enrollment of 700 students.
26.

According to US News, Thomas Cooley has the lowest admissions standards of

any accredited and provisionally accredited law school in the country. For 2010, it accepted
approximately 83 percent of all applicants, an acceptance rate that is nearly 15 percentage points
more than the second least selective law school, Phoenix School of Law. The mean LSAT score
for incoming students is 146 and the mean undergraduate GPA is 2.99, both lows for all
accredited and provisionary accredited law schools.

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27.

Yet despite its relatively lax admissions standards, remaining enrolled in Thomas

Cooley is quite difficult, as the school has, comparatively speaking, lackluster retention rates.
Almost 32 percent of the nearly 1,500 students who enroll in Thomas Cooley fail to matriculate
for their second year, while, incredibly, second-year students still enjoy an attrition rate of 10
percent. Even 22 third-year students -- approximately three percent of the class -- either failed or
dropped out during the academic year.
28.

In marketing itself to students, Thomas Cooley makes a number of bold, if not

incredulous statements that are incommensurate to its low academic and reputational standings in
the legal marketplace. For example, Dean LeDuc and former Dean Brennan publish their own
law school rankings which, coincidentally, ranks Thomas Cooley as the second “best” law
school in the country, right below the top-ranked school, Harvard Law School, and well above
such notable institutions as Yale, Columbia, the University of Chicago and Stanford. These
largely self-serving rankings include numerous factors that, at first glance, have little
pedagogical or edifying value and have absolutely nothing to do with training students to be
attorneys, such as the overall size of the student body, total minority enrollment, library total
square footage, library seating capacity, and the square footage of a law school‟s physical
premises. Each of these factors are given equal statistical weight to other, seemingly more
important factors, like bar passage rate and percentage of graduates employed.
II.

Underlying Fraud Claims
29.

Thomas Cooley is approved for accreditation by the ABA‟s Section of Legal

Education and Admissions to the Bar. As mandated by Section 509(a) of the ABA‟s 2010-2011
Standards for Approval of Law Schools (“Section 509(a)”), an accredited law school must

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“publish basic consumer information” in a “fair and accurate manner reflective of actual
practice.”
30.

Pursuant to this requirement, Thomas Cooley publishes its employment statistics

on its website under the “Consumer Information” tab. In posting the data and marketing itself to
prospective students, the school includes a separate tab, titled “Alumni Success Stories,” which
highlights the employment achievements of recent graduates and includes glowing testimonials
from graduates explaining how attending Thomas Cooley helped them secure their current
positions.
A.
31.

Statements Constituting Fraud
Currently, Thomas Cooley posts on its website the employment data and salary

information for the class of 2010, which is composed of students who graduated in September
2009, January 2010 and May 2010. See 2010 Thomas Cooley Employment Report and Salary
Survey (the “Employment Report”) (attaching Ex. 1).2 According to the Employment Report,
based on a relatively unimpressive response rate of 84 percent (meaning that 154 of 934
graduates failed to respond to the survey), approximately 76 class were employed nine months
after graduation, 50 percent of whom were allegedly working in private practice, 18 percent in
“business,” 15 percent in government, two percent in public interest, and three percent both in
judicial clerkships and academic. The average salary for graduates in private practice was

2

Upon information and belief, Thomas Cooley posted similar reports on its website and
marketing material during the class period, and further disseminated the raw information that
served as the basis for such reports to various third-party data clearinghouses and publications,
such as the ABA and US News.
12

$52,318, $71,470 for those in “business,” $53,312 for those in government and $49,171 for those
in public interest.3
32.

Tellingly, the data makes a number of startling factual omissions that would give

prospective students a more accurate picture of their post-graduation employment prospects. For
example, Thomas Cooley simply presents an overall employment number, and fails to break
down what percentage of graduates were employed in either part-time or temporary positions, or
whether a job requires a JD degree. Accordingly, based on these classifications, a graduate could
be working as a barista in Starbucks -- or toiling away in any capacity in any kind of job, no
matter how menial or poorly compensated or unrelated to law -- and would be deemed employed
and working in “business,” even though such employment is clearly temporary in nature and
obviously does not require a JD degree. Similarly, a contract attorney who has yet to secure
permanent employment and is forced to toil away in transitory document review projects would
be deemed “employed” under Thomas Cooley‟s broad guidelines.
33.

Thomas Cooley also grossly inflates its graduates‟ reported mean salaries, by

calculating them based on a small, mostly self-selected subset of graduates who actually submit
their salary information, thereby presenting statistically meaningless data that is not an
emblematic representation of the entire class. Thus, to take the above example, if a graduate
working in Starbucks as a barista did not report his/her salary information that could potentially
have a significant statistical effect on Thomas Cooley‟s reported mean salary for those employed
in “business,” lowering the number substantially from a seemingly impressive $71,470.
B.

Disseminating False Information to Third Parties

3

Since 2006, Thomas Cooley‟s reported placement rates have ranged between 76 and 82
percent, with similar ranges dating back until 2000.
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34.

The school also disseminates employment data and salary information to other

sources that are readily available to prospective students. In general, there are three primary
sources that Thomas Cooley -- along with all other accredited law schools -- provides such
information to: US News, the ABA and the National Association of Law Placement or NALP.4
However, the US News and the ABA simply require law schools to report an overall employment
number, and do not require schools to distinguish between part-time and full-time jobs or
temporary and permanent employment. Consequently, the data contained in these sources is
riddled with the same legerdemain, dubious calculations and deliberate omissions as found in the
employment information posted and marketed by Thomas Cooley on its website and brochures.
35.

In a recent letter sent to the deans of all accredited law schools, Brian Kelly, the

editor-in-chief of the US News, essentially conceded this point, acidly noting that the “entire law
school sector is perceived to be less than candid” when reporting employment data, and that
many schools appear “not to treat the ABA reporting rules with the seriousness one would
assume.” Robert Morse, “U.S. News Urges Law School Deans to Improve Employment Data,”
U.S. News & World Report, March 9, 2011 (attaching Ex. 2). Acknowledging the obvious,
Kelly concludes, “Perhaps we need metrics besides total employment rates to evaluate a
successful law program.” Id.
36.

Nonetheless, despite knowing full well of the deficiencies in law school-supplied

employment data, such information constitutes a whopping 18 percent (four percent for the
employment rate upon graduation and 14 percent for the rate nine months after graduation) of a

4

All ABA-accredited and provisionally-accredited law schools are required to provide
employment data to the ABA, but only submit such data to U.S. News and NALP on a voluntary
basis.
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law school‟s ranking in US News, the second most important factor after a law school‟s peer
assessment.
37.

As for NALP, law schools when responding to its questionnaire must not simply

report an overall employment number, but specifically break down the exact type of employment
their graduates have obtained, differentiating between part-time and full-time jobs or whether a
position requires a JD degree. Unfortunately, NALP does not either publish or make available to
the public these questionnaires, and instead compiles and tabulates their data into a single
document which contains aggregate statistical information from all law schools. See NALP
Class of 2009 National Summary Report (“NALP Employment Report”) (attaching Ex. 3).
38.

In other words, Thomas Cooley, by virtue of its participation in NALP‟s annual

employment survey, clearly has the means to and actually does distinguish between various
degrees of employment, and breaks down the exact percentage of its recent graduates who have
secured either part-time or full-time employment or whether a position requires a JD degree.
Yet, rather than including these numbers on its website and marketing material and making this
information available to public at large, the school continues to present highly misleading data to
prospective and current students that grossly inflate post-graduation employment rates while
depicting an unrealistic, if not entirely inaccurate picture of bountiful career prospects that do not
exist.
III.

Manipulating Employment Data
39.

In reality, the employment data reported and marketed by Thomas Cooley bears

little resemblance to the actual experiences and dim employment opportunities encountered by
their recent graduates.

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40.

Indeed, based on interviews with former students and other investigatory work,

Plaintiffs believe that perhaps fewer than 20 percent -- if not even fewer -- of recent Thomas
Cooley graduates secure full-time, permanent employment for which a JD degree is required or
preferred within nine months of graduating, and that the majority of them work in either parttime or temporary positions. For example, according to Thomas Cooley‟s Employment Report,
an astounding 157 out of a total 285 graduates working in private practice are employed by law
firms with 2-10 attorney, while 70 graduates -- or nearly 25 percent -- are solo practitioners. See
Ex. 1. Most likely, the overwhelming majority of these graduates are not gainfully employed,
and are either working on a part-time or temporary basis. To that end, only 11 students -- or
about one percent of Thomas Cooley‟s entire graduating class – are purportedly working in firms
with more than 100 attorneys.
41.

Moreover, an examination of the NALP Employment Report confirms that

Thomas Cooley blatantly manipulates employment data, and that substantially fewer than 76
percent of recent graduates are gainfully employed.
42.

According to NALP, 88.2 percent of all law school graduates are “employed”

within nine months of graduation. However, upon greater scrutiny, this number is virtually
meaningless, as it includes any kind of employment, no matter how unrelated to the legal field.
See Ex. 3.
43.

Rather, the NALP Employment Report further breaks down this number into

specific percentages of graduates who are working either part-time or in non-legal jobs. By
doing this, it appears that, in actuality, only 62.9 percent of all graduates have secured some kind
of full-time legal employment.

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44.

Still, even that number is grossly inflated, as the NALP Employment Report does

not distinguish between temporary and permanent employment, and, thus, does not expressly
exclude temporary positions. If the report was to exclude temporary employment, most likely
the employment number would fall well below 50 percent. 5
45.

One must also bear in mind that the NALP employment number includes data

supplied by all law schools, the overwhelming majority of whom are ranked significantly higher
and have considerable more prestige than Thomas Cooley, which is ranked by US News in the
bottom or fourth tier of all accredited law schools. As such, logic dictates that Thomas Cooley‟s
true employment rate would be well below the statistical mean of the bell curve.
46.

Upon information and belief, Thomas Cooley has also employed a limited

program to further “pretty up” their employment numbers, by, among other things, hiring
unemployed graduates as “research assistants” or other “make work” positions for a specified
period of time, so as to classify them as “employed” in various employment surveys. In some
instances, upon information and belief, these internships begin in the ninth month following
graduation, right before Thomas Cooley would be required to report its employment data to the
ABA, NALP and US News.
47.

This practice is emblematic of the extreme measures many law schools across the

country have undertaken recently to paper over the devastation that the Great Recession has
wrought. According to NALP, 42 percent of all law schools have created post-graduate “jobs
5

For greater analysis on the accuracy -- or inaccuracy -- of law school employment data
see Professor Paul Campos‟s article in the New Republic, “Served: How Law Schools
Completely Misrepresent Their Job Numbers” (April 25, 2011), where he courageously takes
law schools to task for adopting dubious accounting methods in tabulating and reporting recent
graduates‟ employment data. (Attached as Ex. 4) In particular, he deftly demonstrates through
some impressive deductive reasoning how for one highly ranked state school the actual
percentage of graduates who have secured full-time, permanent legal positions could be as low
as 33 percent. (Id).
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programs” into which they hired their own recently graduated students. In particular, for the
class of 2009, it is estimated that these programs provided over 800 jobs, accounting for a full
two percentage points in the NALP overall employment rate. For the class of 2010, this number
has jumped to 1,200 jobs, or approximately 2.7 percent of all jobs taken by law school graduates.
See “Selected NALP Findings for the Class of 2010” (attaching Ex. 5). Thus, instead of coming
clean to prospective and current students and acknowledging the steep odds that graduates face
in securing gainful employment, law schools continue to bury their heads in the sand like nothing
is wrong, as if they can somehow wish away the brutal reality of the current economic
environment.
48.

Thomas Cooley‟s manipulation of employment data is all the more galling

considering that its students are graduating in one of the grimmest legal job markets in decades.
Since 2009 alone, some 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs have been eliminated by large
corporate law firms, while commoditized, legal-entry work such as document review is
increasingly being outsourced to countries outside the US, such as India. The entry-level
employment offer rate for 2009 summer associates was at a historic low of 69 percent, as
compared to 90 percent in 2008 and 93 percent in 2007. Scores of law firms have cancelled
summer programs, and in a recent survey 55 percent of law schools reported a decrease of 30
percent or more of the number of firms doing on-campus interviews, an unprecedented decline.
In another survey, only 3 percent of on-campus recruiters indicated that they were looking to hire
third-year law students, as compared to 25 percent in 2008 and 42 percent in 2007.
49.

The job statistics for the class of 2010 are equally grim, if not more so.

According to NALP, the overall employment rate for new law school graduates is the lowest it
has been since 1996. See Ex. 5. Only 68.4 percent of the class have obtained employment for

18

which a JD degree is required, while barely over 50 percent of the class are working in private
practice, a five-percent drop from the previous year. Id. A paltry 71 percent of the class have
obtained a job that is both full-time and permanent. Id. The number of graduates working as
solo practitioners has similarly soared, rising to 5.7 percent of all graduates employed in private
practice, which is most likely a result of graduates, faced with negligible job prospects, being
forced to hang up their own shingle. Id.
50.

The starting salaries of newly minted lawyers have likewise dropped precipitously

over the past few years. The national median salary for the class of 2010 was $63,000, a $9000 - or 13 percent -- decline from the previous year, while the national mean salary was $84,111, an
almost $10,000 -- or ten percent -- decline from the previous year. 6 Moreover, because many
large law firm salaries cluster around $145,000 and $160,000, whereas most smaller firm salaries
hover in the $40,000 to $65,000 range, relatively few salaries were actually near the overall
median or mean.
51.

A recent study by the consulting company Economic Modeling Specialist, Inc.

(“EMSI”) confirms the historically weak job market and dire employment prospects facing
current law school graduates. 7 According to the study, every state besides Nebraska and
Wisconsin are producing more attorneys than they need for the foreseeable future. Across the
country, there were twice as many people who passed the bar in 2009 -- 53,508 -- as there were
job openings -- 26,239. In Michigan the numbers are particularly daunting, with 1,024 people
having passed the bar, even though the state is estimated to only need 862 new lawyers for each
year through 2015, leaving an annual surplus of 162 attorneys.

6
7

See http://www.nalp.org/classof2010_salpressrel.
See http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/the-lawyer-surplus-state-by-state/.
19

52.

More disturbingly, Thomas Cooley misleads and defrauds its students while

saddling them with tens of thousands of dollars in crushing, non-dischargeable debt. According
to US News, Thomas Cooley students graduate on average with a staggering $105,798 in loans,
with a stunning 93 percent of them taking out loans to attend the school. Thomas Cooley‟s
tuition has also increased dramatically in the past 15 years, with annual increases of over five
percent.
53.

Thomas Cooley‟s sharp increase in tuition in recent years mirrors the tuition trend

in the legal education industry in general. Over the past two decades, law school tuition has
risen exponentially, far exceeding both inflation and any increase in lawyers‟ starting salaries,
and at many private institutions can exceed well over $40,000 annually, excluding living
expenses. Specifically, between 1989 and 2009, tuition rates have shot up by 317 percent, well
above the 71 percent seen at colleges. Not surprisingly, the debt burden of law school graduates
continues to rise unabated, and the average debt burden for graduates of private institutions is
now over $100,000.
54.

The dramatic increase in law school tuition has dovetailed with the dramatic

increase in faculty compensation. Law school professors and deans are perhaps the best
remunerated in academia today, enjoying both lavish perks and exorbitant salaries that rival
those of Fortune 500 executives. For example, during the fiscal year of 2008-2009, Thomas
Cooley paid its dean, Don LeDuc, $548,047 in total compensation, while still paying its former
dean and school founder, Thomas Brennan, $368,581 in total compensation. Thomas Cooley‟s
nine other highest paid employees earned between $193,925 and $242,476 in total compensation.
55.

Thomas Cooley, as with any law school, has every incentive to perpetuate this

mass deception, because they are not required by the ABA, Department of Education or any

20

other governing body to independently audit or verify their employment data. The incentive to
cheat is so great that even one law school dean, Phillip J. Closius of the University of Baltimore
School of Law, in a New York Times exposé about the manipulation of placement rates went to
the extent of publicly conceding that “[t]here are millions of dollars riding on students‟ decisions
about where to go to law school, and that creates real institutional pressures [to manipulate
data].”8
56.

Moreover, Thomas Cooley is primarily marketing its product to naïve, relatively

unsophisticated consumers -- many of whom are barely removed from college -- who are often
making their first “big-ticket” purchase based on asymmetrical information. These prospective
students are applying to law school with one objective in mind: to attain the kind of job that
provides compensation and a lifestyle that is commensurate with and worthy of the enormous
time, money and personal sacrifice invested in a legal education. However, if Thomas Cooley
was to disclose accurate employment data and the steep odds its graduates face in securing

8

On July 29, 2011, Mr. Closius formally resigned as dean from the University of
Baltimore. In stepping down, Mr. Closius circulated a highly controversial -- and surprisingly
frank -- resignation letter in which he conceded that the University of Baltimore president had
asked for his resignation, and that the tensions between them had largely stemmed from the law
school‟s rapidly rising tuition and the fact that the University was essentially using the school to
subsidize the undergraduate program, retaining an astounding 45 percent of all revenue
generated by law tuition, fees and state subsidies. See http://abovethelaw.com/2011/07/a-lawdean-resigns-and-spills-the-beans-on-how-his-university-has-been-taking-advantage-of-lawstudents/#more-85162. The problem had grown so acute that the ABA‟s Accreditation
Committee requested that the University submit a report by March 2012 “which provides in part
a rationale for the School of Law‟s share of costs for non-law school activities and central
administration services and information about any agreement between the Law School and the
University regarding a fair process by which the Law School‟s contribution to the University for
direct and indirect costs will be determined.” Id.

21

gainful employment, it would become abundantly clear to any rational purchaser how poor of an
investment attending Thomas Cooley is.
57.

To a remarkable extent, Thomas Cooley -- like most law schools -- has been

astonishingly successful in pulling the wool over prospective students. Currently, Thomas
Cooley enrolls about 4,000 students, and its enrollment has skyrocketed since 2006, when the
ABA finally granted accreditation to its three satellite campuses. Last year, law schools awarded
over 43,000 JD degrees (an additional 41,156 this year), an increase of 11 percent from a decade
earlier, while the number of students taking the law school entrance examination (LSAT)
increased by over 20 percent between 2007 and 2009. For the 2009-2010 academic year, a
record 154,549 students enrolled in American law schools, including a record 51,426 first-year
students. The total number of law schools has increased by nine percent over the past decade,
and, despite the ominous employment trends and dearth of available jobs, there are a handful of
new law schools that are slated to open their doors in the next few years. Allowing the status
quo to persist will almost certainly ensure that tens of thousands of law school graduates -- a
whole “lost” generation of lawyers -- will continue to be churned out over the next decade with
absolutely no realistic chance of ever earning back their investment.
IV.

Manipulating Salary Information
58.

Further, Thomas Cooley grossly inflates their graduates‟ reported mean salaries,

by calculating them based on a small, mostly self-selected subset of graduates who actually
reported their salary information, and not on a broad, statistically meaningful representation of
its graduates.
59.

For that matter, Thomas Cooley doesn‟t even publish in its Employment Report

the percentage or number of students who actually report salary information. See Ex. 1. As

22

such, there is no possible way for a prospective student looking at Thomas Cooley‟s marketing
material to determine if the reported salary information accurately reflects the salaries earned by
recent Thomas Cooley graduates.
60.

Additionally, an examination of employment data produced by U.S. News

demonstrates the dubious value and deceptive nature of Thomas Cooley‟s mean salary
information. According to US News, for the class of 2009, only 38 percent of graduates working
in the private sector -- i.e. private practice or “business” -- reported salary information, which is
a mere 18 percent of the all graduates reporting employment data. Meanwhile US News did not
report the percentage of students working in non-private-sector positions, such as government or
public interest, who disclosed salary information.
61.

Upon information and belief, Plaintiffs believe that a substantial portion of recent

Thomas Cooley graduates make significantly less than the reported mean salaries, and that
Thomas Cooley has failed to include these salaries in any statistical analysis or calculations.
Thomas Cooley knowingly and purposely omits the salaries of graduates who have secured only
temporary or part-time employment from its official marketing material. This material
nondisclosure has the effect of “goosing” the numbers, making it appear their graduates earn
substantially more money than the reality of the situation.
62.

In actuality, many Thomas Cooley graduates are in dire financial straits, living

paycheck to paycheck, barely able to pay off their tens of thousands of dollars in nondischargeable debt, much less save enough money for down payments for homes or other major
purchases that signify one‟s entrance into adulthood. They are working in mostly dead-end jobs,
doing document review and other menial, mindless drudgery, essentially functioning as glorified
paralegals or secretaries with little control over their careers. In short, they have not obtained --

23

and most likely never will obtain -- the kind of job that they thought would be waiting for them
upon graduating from law school.
V.

Changing the Status Quo
63.

Fortunately, after much public hand-wringing and increased media scrutiny, the

tectonic plates in the legal profession have finally begun to shift, as practitioners and politicians
alike are starting to roundly demand that law schools change their deceptive ways and accurately
report all available employment information.
64.

For example, Senator Barbara Boxer of California has sent two separate letters to

Stephen Zack, President of the ABA, taking his organization to task for failing to properly police
the law school industry. See Letters from Senator Barbara Boxer to Stephen Zack, dated March
31, 2011 & May 20, 2011 (“Boxer Letters”)(attaching Ex. 6). In her most recent letter, she
directly implores the ABA to require that all law schools independently audit and verify
employment data and salary information that are either included in marketing material to
prospective students or disseminated to third-party information clearinghouses and publications,
such as US News and the ABA. Senator Charles Grasserly of Iowa, just recently, has sent his
own letter to the ABA, demanding that the organization answer 31 detailed questions pertaining
to the ABA‟s regulation of the law school industry. See Letter from Senator Charles Grasserly to
Stephen Zack, dated July 11, 2011 (attaching Ex. 7). In particular, Senator Grasserly references
the questionable practices employed by law schools when offering merit-based scholarships (i.e.
they extend substantially more scholarships than they can possibly renew), the supersaturated job
market facing new graduates, and the increased debt burden assumed by law school students as
raising serious concerns whether tax payers will ultimately be on the hook for the hundreds of

24

millions of dollars in federally-backed loans that ultimately flow into law school coffers each
year.
65.

Similarly, a coalition of 55 law school student body presidents, fed up with the

ABA‟s inability to properly police law schools, have sent to Congress proposed legislation that
would ensure “enhanced accuracy, accountability and transparency in the reporting of data
pertaining to legal education.” See Student Bar Association‟s Proposed Bill (“SBA Bill”) and
accompanying Press Release (attaching Ex. 8). Among other things, the proposed legislation
creates a new standard for reporting employment data, requires law schools to submit annual
employment reports to the Department of Education, mandates that law school deans personally
endorse such reports, and empowers the DOE to audit the reports. The SBA Bill expressly aims
to parallel federal securities laws, where publicly-held companies must submit annual reports to
the SEC disclosing material financial information.
66.

The problem has gotten so far out of hand that Bill Hebert, President of the

California Bar Association, in a much publicized article in the California Bar Journal exhorts law
school deans to adopt more rigorous reporting standards by disclosing the type of detailed
employment and salary data that would allow students to get a realistic picture of their postgraduate financial situation. Bill Hebert, “What is the Value of the Law Degree?” California Bar
Journal, February 2011(attaching Ex. 9). Hebert chides schools for “hiding employment
outcomes in aggregate statistical forms,” and impresses upon them the need to reveal the exact
percentage of their graduates who have actually obtained full-time, permanent employment -- the
type of information Plaintiffs are now seeking. Id.
VI.

Role of the ABA

25

67.

The ABA‟s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is responsible

for accrediting and regulating all accredited legal institutions. Unfortunately, despite years of
vociferous complaints by industry insiders regarding the pervasive practice that law schools
blatantly manipulate employment data, the ABA has been largely derelict in its duties,
essentially allowing law schools to behave with impunity as they bamboozle their students.9 Not
surprisingly, the ABA‟s Legal Education Council is dominated by law school deans, as both its
current chair, John O‟Brien of the New England School of Law, and chair-elect, Kent Syverud of
the Washington University School of Law, are deans of large, prominent law schools. Likewise,
the committee of the Legal Education Council which is directly responsible for regulating the
reporting of post-graduate placement data -- i.e. the Questionnaire Committee -- is dominated by
law school deans and professors, including its current chair, Dean Art Gaudio of the Western
New England College School of Law.
68.

It is only until recently that the ABA has finally adopted measures that would

require greater reporting transparency, by specifically mandating that law schools “unbundle”
employment data. “The Questionnaire Committee‟s Report on Reporting Law School Placement
Data,” dated May 28, 2011 (attaching Ex. 10). Admittedly, these new guidelines mark a positive
first step forward and at least attempts to rectify the most egregious deceptive practices, by,
To that end, the ABA‟s overall competency has recently been questioned by the
National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, which advises the
Department of Education on accreditation issues. Specifically, the committee found that the
ABA had failed to comply with 17 regulations, including, among others, failing “to set a
standard for job placement by its member institutions.” See
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2011/06/aba-is.html. One of the members on the
committee, Arthur Keiser, publicly accused the ABA of “not getting it,” noting that an
accrediting agency would never accredit an institution with 17 outstanding issues. Id; see also
Ex. 7 (quoting June 11, 2011 article from The Chronicle of Higher Education which describes
the committee‟s members as expressing “frustration that they could not take stronger actions or
at least state their concerns [regarding the ABA‟s lackluster accreditation process] with stronger
language.”
9

26

among other things, expressly mandating that law schools distinguish between various degrees of
employment, such as full-time or part-time and permanent or temporary, or whether a position
actually requires a JD degree.
69.

Nonetheless, the ABA hasn‟t gone nearly far enough in disincentivizing schools

from “cooking” the data. First, the guidelines will not go into effect for at least another year,
thereby allowing law schools to continue deceiving prospective students. Second, the guidelines
still permit schools to continue self-reporting all employment data and salary information, and do
not require that they retain unrelated, independent third-parties to audit and verify such data.
70.

Last, after initially agreeing to rely on the independent-minded and industry gold-

standard NALP to gather the relevant employment data, the ABA, in a complete 180-degree turn,
has decided to cut NALP out of the process entirely. See e.g. Karen Sloan, “NALP Clashes with
ABA over Jobs Data – and Hints at Legal Action,” National Law Journal, August 1, 2011,
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202509192905&NALP_clashes_with_ABA
_over_jobs_data__and_hints_at_taking_legal_action&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1. In assessing the
reason for this apparent about-face, James Leipold, NALP‟s Executive Director, stressed , “I
think they [the ABA] see NALP's candor about the state of the legal job market as harmful to the
industry. I believe their intent is to recapture their ability to control the message to the public
about the status of the job market. There's a conflict of interest here.” Id; see also Professor
William D. Henderson, “More Data but Less Transparency,” National Law Journal, August 2,
2011,http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202509393144&More_data_but_less_t
ransparency&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1 (noting that ABA‟s proposal would undermine NALP‟s
ability to collect, analyze and publish accurate employment data; “In a nutshell, here is the
problem. Law schools are heavily burdened by information requests. The law schools will

27

comply with any information request from the ABA because the ABA is their accrediting
agency. If the ABA and NALP cover much of the same ground but use different terminology -the ABA will have to invent its own to avoid infringing on NALP's detailed classification
system -- then some schools may forgo the voluntary submission to NALP. Unfortunately,
NALP cannot publish reliable industry-level statistics if law schools cannot spare the time and
expense to fill out a duplicative information request.”).
71.

The sobering reality of the situation is that law schools are no different than the

proverbial fox guarding the henhouse, and when given the opportunity and incentive to act
within their self-interests by making themselves look better, they almost certainly will. Indeed,
the Dean of Villanova Law School was forced to come clean and admit that the school in the past
“knowingly” reported false and inaccurate information to the ABA. Rather, just as publicly-held
companies must independently audit their financial statements so as to ensure the integrity of the
marketplace, the same must be demanded of law schools so as to ensure that prospective students
-- i.e. consumers -- are making well-informed, carefully-considered decisions based on 100percent accurate information.
VII.

Thomas Cooley Attempts to Intimidate its Critics
72.

Instead of coming clean about its failure to disclose accurate employment

information, Thomas Cooley, in a crude, cynical attempt to intimidate potential plaintiffs, chill
free speech and police the Internet, has filed two facially meritless, sham, SLAPP lawsuits in
Michigan State court against Plaintiffs‟ Counsel, Kurzon Strauss and two of its attorneys, and
four “John Doe” plaintiffs for alleged defamatory statements made over the Internet. See
Thomas M. Cooley Law School v. Kurzon Strauss LLP, et al., Case No. 11780-CZ (Ingham Cir.

28

Ct. July 14, 2011); Thomas M. Cooley Law School v. John Doe 1, et al., Case No. 11781-CZ
(Ingham Cir. Ct. July 14, 2011).10
73.

Needless to say, these lawsuits have been met with near universal derision,

engendering a strong backlash in both the press and the legal community. See in general Elie
Mystal, “Cooley Lawsuit Update: One Of The „Cooley Four‟ Responds To The Law School‟s Complaint,”
Abovethelaw.com, July 15, 2011, http://abovethelaw.com/2011/07/cooley-lawsuit-update-one-of-thecooley-four-responds-to-the-law-schools-complaint/#more-83109.
74.

In a stirring defense of his right to free speech and a sharp rebuke of Thomas

Cooley‟s plainly ridiculous lawsuit, one of the “John Doe” plaintiffs, “Rockstar05”, admonished
the school for its bullying behavior. Specifically, he writes: “I believe I was very clear
throughout my dated blog post that I was expressing my personal opinion. I would analogize my
entire post reflecting my personal experience and personal views of the Thomas M. Cooley Law
School to watching a movie on a Friday night then publishing online statements asserting that it
was a poor investment of time, money, and certainly not worthwhile -- to boycott the movie and
go ahead and watch that other movie that released the same Friday or any other movie. Do
motion picture producers go out and publicly file lawsuits against each and every one who
trashes their film? Let‟s make the analysis more relevant and assume I flatter myself and liken
my blog post to a giant public platform to express my views and opinions. Will Michael Bay go
out and sue Roger Ebert, who is arguably one of the biggest critics in America, for trashing his
movie?”11
10

Kurzon Strauss and attorneys David Anziska and Jesse Strauss fully intend to move to
dismiss the lawsuit on both procedural and substantive grounds, and further intend to seek
sanctions against Thomas Cooley and its attorneys and to strike certain scurrilous allegations.
11
http://www.qfora.com/jdu/thread.php?threadId=18891#post266764.

29

75.

As to his point that Thomas Cooley manipulates its employment statistics,

“Rockstar05” acidly notes: “As for distorted employment data, I have previously acknowledged
that this is not a problem that is confined to Cooley alone. The ABA regulation of school
reported employment data has been widely criticized by commentators, scambloggers, law
professors, in addition to industry experts and analysts as being misleading. Common grounds
for criticism include the idea of self-reported employment data by the law schools and notable
deficiencies in the reporting in terms of not disclosing overall response rates and either having a
breakdown or reflecting employment that actually requires a law degree. Since I concur with the
opinions of these critics and publicize it, will this opinion and view subject me to another 200
law suits filed by each and every ABA approved law school?”12
76.

Perhaps most damning of all, “Rockstar05” stresses that although his alleged

defamatory blog post has been up for over five months, the school, until now, had not even
attempted to contact him and request that he take it down, and instead resorted to immediate
legal action. (“Finally, I would like to add that Cooley has not attempted to contact me even
once, either through e-mail or through a blog comment on this post. If they had done so, or
perhaps even are willing to retract their lawsuit at this early stage, I would consider removing the
post altogether.”)13 This fact alone, more than anything, unequivocally demonstrates that Thomas
Cooley‟s true intentions are not to merely defend its reputation, but steamroll its critics and
vanquish all honest debate.
CLASS ACTION ALLEGATIONS
77.

This action is brought and may properly be maintained as a class action pursuant

to Rule 23(b)(2) and (b)(3) of the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure. Plaintiffs bring this action,
12
13

Id.
Id.
30

on behalf of themselves and all other similarly situated, as representative members of the
following proposed class (the “Class”):
All persons who are either presently enrolled or graduated from the Thomas M. Cooley
Law School within the statutory period.
78.

Excluded from the Class are Defendants, Thomas Cooley, its employees, officers

and directors, the Judge(s) assigned to this case, and the attorneys of record in this case.
Plaintiffs reserve the right to amend the Class definition if discovery and further investigation
reveal that the Class should be expanded or otherwise modified.
79.

For the foregoing reasons, this action fulfills the standards and requirements as

outlined in Rule 23(b)(2) and (b)(3) of the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure:
A.

The Parties are Numerous and Easily Ascertainable

80.

The proposed Class is so numerous that it is manifestly impracticable to bring

them all before the court. Though the exact number and identities of the Class is unknown at this
time, they can be ascertained through appropriate discovery, and likely contain thousands of
people, as nearly one thousand students graduate from Thomas Cooley each year. The number
and identities of other Class members may be determined from Defendants‟ records and files,
and potential Class members may easily be notified about the pendency of this action.
B.

Common Questions of Law and Facts Predominate

81.

This action presents questions of law and facts common to the Class, including,

but not limited to, the following:
a.

Whether Defendants are engaged in deceptive, misleading, unfair,

fraudulent and/or otherwise unlawful practices through their non-disclosure of material facts and

31

affirmative misleading statements regarding post-graduate employment data and salary
information;
b.

Whether Defendants know the true and real percentage of recent graduates

who secure full-time, permanent employment for which a JD degree is required or preferred and
are, therefore, gainfully employed;
c.

Whether Defendants‟ conduct violated the MCPA and constitute fraud,

constructive fraud and/or negligent misrepresentation, as alleged herein;
d.

Whether Plaintiffs and Class members are entitled to recover actual

damages as a result of the actions alleged herein;
e.

Whether Plaintiffs and members of the Class are entitled to recover

restitution of tuition monies remitted to Defendants as a result of the actions alleged herein;
f.

Whether Plaintiffs and members of the Class are entitled to ancillary

relief, including the disgorgement of unearned profits, as a result of the actions alleged herein;
g.

Whether Plaintiffs and Class members of the Class are entitled to recover

punitive damages as a result of the actions alleged herein;
h.

Whether Plaintiff and Class members are entitled to an award of

reasonable attorneys‟ fees, pre-judgment interest and costs of this suit;
i.

Whether Defendants should be forced to retain independent, non-related

third-parties to audit and verify their post-graduate employment data and salary information; and
j.

Whether Defendants should be enjoined from continuing to make false

and misleading representations and omissions regarding their post-graduate employment data
and salary information.
C.

Plaintiffs’ Claims Are Typical of the Class

32

82.

Plaintiffs‟ claims are typical of the claims and of the members of the Class

because they have all been damaged in the same manner and way as a result of Defendants‟
failure to disclose material facts and policies of misrepresentation and omissions. Accordingly,
the interests of the representative Plaintiffs are co-extensive with the interests of each Class
member, and all have a common right of recovery based upon the same facts.
D.

The Class Representatives Can Adequately Represent the Class

83.

Plaintiffs are adequate representatives of the Class because Plaintiffs are members

of the Class and their interests do not conflict with the interests of the Class. The interests of the
Class will be fairly and adequately protected by Plaintiffs and their undersigned counsel, who are
competent and experienced in the prosecution of class action litigation.
E.

A Class Action Provides a Substantial Benefit to the Courts and Litigants

84.

Should individual Class members be required to bring separate actions, courts

throughout Michigan would be confronted by a multiplicity of lawsuits, thus burdening the court
system while also creating the risk of inconsistent rulings and contradictory judgments. In
contrast to proceeding on a case-by-case basis, in which inconsistent results would magnify the
delay and expense to all parties and the court system, this class action will present far fewer
management difficulties while providing unitary adjudication, economies of scale and
comprehensive supervision by a single court.
85.

Members of the Class almost invariably lack the means to pay attorneys to

prosecute their claims individually. Given the complexity of the issues presented here,
individual claims are not sufficiently sizeable to attract the interests of highly able and dedicated
attorneys who will prosecute them on a contingency basis. Only by aggregating claims can

33

Plaintiffs gain the leverage necessary to pursue a just and global resolution of the issues raised in
this Complaint.
86.

WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves and the Class, pray for an

order certifying the Class and appointing Plaintiffs and their counsel of record to represent the
Class.
FIRST CAUSE OF ACTION
(Against All Defendants for Violations of the
Consumer Protection Act, MCLS §445.901, et seq.)
87.

Plaintiffs incorporate by reference each and every allegation set forth above as if

fully stated herein.
88.

Defendants‟ actions constitute unlawful, unfair, deceptive and fraudulent

actions/practices as defined by the Consumer Protection Act, MCLS §445.901, et seq. or the
MCPA, as they occurred in the course of trade or commerce.
89.

As part of its fraudulent marketing practices and recruitment program, Thomas

Cooley engaged in a pattern and practice of knowingly and intentionally making numerous false
representations and omissions of material facts, with the intent to deceive and fraudulently
induce reliance by Plaintiffs and the members of the Class. These false representations and
omissions were uniform and identical in nature, and include, without limitation, the following:
a.

Stating false placement rates during the recruitment process;

b.

Manipulating post-graduate employment data, so as to give the appearance that
the overwhelming majority of recent graduates secure full-time, permanent
employment for which a JD degree is required or preferred;

c.

Grossly inflating the salaries earned by recent graduates;

34

d.

Disseminating false post-graduate employment data and salary information to
various third-party data clearinghouses and publications, such as the ABA and US
News;

d.

Making deceptive and misleading statements, representations and omissions
concerning Thomas Cooley‟s reputation with potential employers;

e.

Making deceptive and misleading statements, representations and omissions
concerning the value of a Thomas Cooley law degree; and

f.

Making deceptive and misleading statements, representations and omissions
concerning the pace at which recent graduates can obtain gainful employment in
their chosen field.

90.

In general, Plaintiffs and members of the Class enrolled at Thomas Cooley for the

purpose of securing upon graduation full-time, permanent employment for which a JD degree is
required or preferred. Defendants‟ acts, practices and omissions, therefore, were material to
Plaintiffs‟ decision to enroll and attend Thomas Cooley, and were justifiably relied upon by
Plaintiffs.
91.

The Defendants‟ above-alleged actions constitute unfair business practices since

the actions were deceptive, immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous, substantially injurious,
and operate to the competitive disadvantage of other law schools. They are also likely to deceive
the public. Moreover, the injury to the Plaintiffs was substantial and outweighs the utility of the
Defendants‟ practices.
92.

The unfair and deceptive trade acts and practices have directly, foreseeably and

proximately caused damage to Plaintiffs and other members of the Class.

35

93.

The Defendants‟ practices, in addition, are unfair and deceptive because they have

caused Plaintiffs and the Class substantial harm, which is not outweighed by any countervailing
benefits to consumers or competition, and is not an injury consumers themselves could have
reasonably avoided.
94.

The Defendants‟ acts and practices have misled and deceived the general public in

the past, and will continue to mislead and deceive the general public into the future, by, among
other things, causing them to apply to and enroll at Thomas Cooley under false pretenses.
95.

Plaintiffs are entitled to preliminary and permanent injunctive relief ordering the

Defendants to immediately cease these unfair business practices, as well as disgorgement and
restitution to Plaintiffs of all revenue associated with their unfair practices, or such revenues as
the Court may find equitable and just.
SECOND CAUSE OF ACTION
(Against All Defendants for Fraud)
96.

Plaintiffs incorporate by reference each and every allegation set forth above as if

fully stated herein.
97.

As part of its fraudulent marketing practices and recruitment program, Thomas

Cooley engaged in a pattern and practice of knowingly and intentionally making numerous false
representations and omissions of material facts, with the intent to deceive and fraudulently
induce reliance by Plaintiffs and the members of the Class. These false representations and
omissions were uniform and identical in nature, and include, without limitation, the following:
a.

Stating false placement rates during the recruitment process;

36

b.

Manipulating post-graduate employment data, so as to give the appearance that
the overwhelming majority of recent graduates secure full-time, permanent
employment for which a JD degree is required or preferred;

c.

Grossly inflating the salaries earned by recent graduates;

d.

Disseminating false post-graduate employment data and salary information to
various third-party data clearinghouses and publications, such as the ABA and US
News;

d.

Making deceptive and misleading statements, representations and omissions
concerning Thomas Cooley‟s reputation with potential employers;

e.

Making deceptive and misleading statements, representations and omissions
concerning the value of a Thomas Cooley law degree; and

f.

Making deceptive and misleading statements, representations and omissions
concerning the pace at which recent graduates can obtain gainful employment in
their chosen field.

98.

In general, Plaintiffs and members of the Class enrolled at Thomas Cooley for the

purpose of securing full-time, permanent employment upon graduation. Defendants‟ acts and
practices, therefore, were material to Plaintiffs‟ decision to enroll and attend Thomas Cooley,
and were justifiably relied upon by Plaintiffs.
99.

Plaintiffs and members of the Class did in fact justifiably rely on these material

representations and omissions when deciding to enroll at Thomas Cooley. Specifically, Plaintiffs
reviewed and relied upon post-graduate employment data and salary information posted on
Thomas Cooley‟s website and included in marketing brochures, as well as all such information
disseminated to third-party data clearinghouses and publications, such as the ABA and US News.

37

100.

The material representations and omissions were part of a common scheme,

practice and plan conceived and executed by Thomas Cooley to mislead, deceive and defraud
Plaintiffs and members of the Class. Defendants made these statements and representations
regarding their graduates‟ employment data and salary information, including their graduates‟
ability to secure full-time, permanent employment for which a JD degree is required or preferred,
knowing full well they were false, untrue, fraudulent and deceptive. In fact, Defendants know
that the overwhelming majority of their graduates fail to secure gainful employment following
graduation, and are forced to take jobs incommensurate to their education level.
101.

Plaintiffs were, at all relevant times, ignorant of the true facts and did not know

that in actuality few Thomas Cooley graduates secure gainful employment following graduation.
Had Plaintiffs known of the dire financial straits faced by the overwhelming majority of Thomas
Cooley students following graduation, they would never have enrolled in Thomas Cooley and
incurred tens of thousands of dollars in non-dischargeable debt.
102.

In addition, Thomas Cooley occupies a fiduciary position as educators, and owes

a heightened duty of care to Plaintiffs and members of the Class to act in good faith and engage
in fair dealings. Likewise, by virtue of the fact that many of Thomas Cooley‟s staff and faculty
are attorneys and members of the Michigan Bar, they have certain ethical obligations and
responsibilities to Plaintiffs and members of the Class. Defendants breached these heightened
duties of care by making a series of material misstatements and omissions regarding their
graduates‟ employment data and salary information.
103.

The above-referenced material misstatements and omissions were knowingly,

willfully, intentionally, maliciously, oppressively, and fraudulently undertaken with the express
purpose and intention of defrauding Plaintiffs and the members of the Class, as well as to the

38

substantial benefit of the Defendants. Consequently, Plaintiffs and members of the Class are
entitled to punitive damages, the disgorgement of tuition monies, the reimbursement of
attorneys‟ fees and all other monetary and equitable relief as the Court may find equitable and
just.
THIRD CAUSE OF ACTION
(Against All Defendants for Negligent Misrepresentation)
104.

Plaintiffs incorporate by reference each and every allegation set forth above as if

fully stated herein.
105.

As part of its fraudulent marketing practices and recruitment program, Thomas

Cooley engaged in a pattern and practice of knowingly and intentionally making numerous false
representations and omissions of material facts, with the intent to deceive and fraudulently
induce reliance by Plaintiffs and the members of the Class. These false representations and
omissions were uniform and identical in nature, and include, without limitation, the following:
a.

Stating false placement rates during the recruitment process;

b.

Manipulating post-graduate employment data, so as to give the appearance that
the overwhelming majority of recent graduates secure full-time, permanent
employment for which a JD degree is required or preferred;

c.

Grossly inflating the salaries earned by recent graduates;

d.

Disseminating false post-graduate employment data and salary information to
various third-party data clearinghouses and publications, such as the ABA and US
News;

d.

Making deceptive and misleading statements, representations and omissions
concerning Thomas Cooley‟s reputation with potential employers;

39

e.

Making deceptive and misleading statements, representations and omissions
concerning the value of a Thomas Cooley law degree; and

f.

Making deceptive and misleading statements, representations and omissions
concerning the pace at which recent graduates can obtain gainful employment in
their chosen field.

106.

In general, Plaintiffs and members of the Class enrolled at Thomas Cooley for the

purpose of securing full-time, permanent employment upon graduation. Defendants‟ acts and
practices, therefore, were material to Plaintiffs‟ decision to enroll and attend Thomas Cooley,
and were justifiably relied upon by Plaintiffs.
107.

Plaintiffs and members of the Class did in fact justifiably rely on these material

representations and omissions when deciding to enroll at Thomas Cooley. Specifically, Plaintiffs
reviewed and relied upon post-graduate employment data and salary information posted on
Thomas Cooley‟s website and included in marketing brochures, as well as all such information
disseminated to third-party data clearinghouses and publications, such as the ABA and US News.
108.

The material representations and omissions were part of a common scheme,

practice and plan conceived and executed by Thomas Cooley to mislead, deceive and defraud
Plaintiffs and members of the Class. Defendants made these statements and representations
regarding their graduates‟ employment data and salary information, including their graduates‟
ability to secure full-time, permanent employment for which a JD degree is required or preferred,
knowing full well they were false, untrue, fraudulent and deceptive. In fact, Defendant knows
that the overwhelming majority of their graduates fail to secure gainful employment following
graduation, and are forced to take jobs incommensurate to their education level.

40

109.

Plaintiffs were, at all relevant times, ignorant of the true facts and did not know

that in actuality few Thomas Cooley graduates secure gainful employment following graduation.
Had Plaintiffs known of the dire financial straits faced by the overwhelming majority of Thomas
Cooley students following graduation, they would never have enrolled in Thomas Cooley and
incurred tens of thousands of dollars in non-dischargeable debt.
110.

In addition, Thomas Cooley occupies a fiduciary position as educators, and owes

a heightened duty of care to Plaintiffs and members of the Class to act in good faith and engage
in fair dealings. Likewise, by virtue of the fact that many of Thomas Cooley‟s staff and faculty
are attorneys and members of the Michigan Bar, they have certain ethical obligations and
responsibilities to Plaintiffs and members of the Class. Defendants breached these heightened
duties of care by making a series of material misstatements and omissions regarding their
graduates‟ employment data and salary information.
111.

The above-referenced material misstatements and omissions were knowingly,

willfully, intentionally, maliciously, oppressively, and fraudulently undertaken with the express
purpose and intention of defrauding Plaintiffs and the members of the Class, as well as to the
substantial benefit of the Defendants. Consequently, Plaintiffs and members of the Class are
entitled to punitive damages, the disgorgement of tuition monies, the reimbursement of
attorneys‟ fees and all other monetary and equitable relief as the Court may find equitable and
just.
PRAYER FOR RELIEF
WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves and members of the Class, pray for
relief and judgment against Defendants Thomas Cooley and Does 1 though 20 as follows:

41

1. For preliminary and injunctive relief enjoining Defendants, their agents, servants,
employees and all persons acting in concert with them from continuing to engage in
their unlawful recruitment program and manipulation of post-graduate employment
data and salary information, and all other unfair, unlawful and /or fraudulent business
practices alleged above and that may yet be discovered in the prosecution of this
action;
2. For certification of the Class;
3. For restitution and disgorgement of all tuition monies remitted to Thomas Cooley,
totaling $250 million;
4. For damages;
5. For punitive damages;
6. For an accounting by Defendants for any and all profits derived by them from the
herein-alleged unlawful, unfair, and/or fraudulent conduct and/or business practices;
7. For injunctive relief ordering that Thomas Cooley retains unrelated, independent
third-parties to audit and verify post-graduate employment data and salary
information;
8. For attorneys‟ fees and expenses pursuant to all applicable laws;
9.

For prejudgment interest; and

10. For such other and further relief as the Court may deem proper.

DATED: August 10, 2011

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

THE HYDER LAW FIRM, P.C.

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By: /s/ Steven Hyder
Steven Hyder (P69875)
The Hyder Law Firm, P.C.
PO Box 2242
Monroe, MI 48161
[e-mail]
Phone [phone]

David Anziska
Jeff Kurzon
Jesse Strauss (admission pending)
Kurzon Strauss LLP
305 Broadway, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10007
Phone [phone]
Facsimile [phone]
www.KurzonStrauss.com
Counsel for Plaintiffs, individually
and for all others similarly situated

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DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL
Plaintiffs hereby demand a jury trial on all causes of action so triable.
DATED: August 10, 2011

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

THE HYDER LAW FIRM, P.C.

By: /s/ Steven Hyder
Steven Hyder (P69875)
The Hyder Law Firm, P.C.
PO Box 2242
Monroe, MI 48161
[e-mail]
Phone [phone]

David Anziska
Jeff Kurzon
Jesse Strauss (admission pending)
Kurzon Strauss LLP
305 Broadway, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10007
Phone [phone]
Facsimile [phone]
Counsel for Plaintiffs, individually
and for all others similarly situated

44