RJ Wolcott

Lansing State Journal

Update: The employment figures given below for Cooley graduates are for students who found long-term, full-time jobs that require bar passage within nine months of graduation. They were described incorrectly in an earlier version of this story.

LANSING - Packed into a room full of aspiring lawyers during orientation at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, Takura Nyamfukudza was perplexed.

He’d expected law school to be smaller.

This was Cooley in 2007, before the financial crisis turned the job market for new lawyers upside down and changed the calculus for law schools.

Cooley, now known as Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School, was the biggest law school in the country then, and it was only getting bigger.

“When we were moving between the (former Masonic) Temple and Cooley’s main building, it took several cycles of lights at Capital Avenue for all of us to cross the street,” said Nyamfukudza, a U.S. Army veteran who made his way through law school between deployments.

Cooley’s success was a boon to downtown Lansing.

Bars like Brannigan Brothers were filled with law students on nights and weekends. Cooley students flocked to downtown apartments, including the Arbaugh building.

But by the time Nyamfukudza graduated in 2013, Cooley’s boom was becoming a bust.

Law school enrollment fell by 25% nationwide between 2010 and 2016. Cooley’s enrollment fell more than 60%, dropping from a peak of 3,931 students in 2010 to fewer than 1,300 last year, according to data Cooley submitted to the American Bar Association.

At its peak in 2010, Cooley brought in more than $123 million. By 2014, the most recent year for which tax records are available, revenue had plummeted to $63 million.

Even after enrollment began to drop off, Cooley was still bringing in money. Its end-of-the-year fund balance continued to rise until 2012, the same year it opened a new campus near Tampa, Florida, peaking at $132 million. By 2014, it had fallen to less than $110 million.

Cooley responded by laying off more than half of its full-time faculty and closing its Ann Arbor campus.

Related: Enrollment up, scores down at Cooley

Cooley’s freefall came with consequences for downtown. Several watering holes frequented by law school students dried up. Landlords looked to young professionals to fill the gaps left by fewer law school students downtown. Washington Square hasn’t recovered.

“I think nightlife and weekends were quite dependent on thousands of bodies from Cooley Law School,” Bob Trezise, president and CEO of the Lansing Economic Area Partnership, said. “They simply aren’t there right now."

Cooley President Don LeDuc declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this story. Cooley declined to participate in the story or provide data they submit to the American Bar Association. [Update: On April 10, Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School released this statement in response to this story]

Cooley still owns around 440,000 square feet of space in three square blocks downtown. But the research and study building adjacent to the library that opened during Cooley's heyday appears mostly empty these days. And the 105,000-square-foot former Masonic Temple that Cooley owns has been on the market since December 2014.

The original asking price was $8.15 million. Today, the right buyer can have it for $4.75 million.

Losses and gains

The-Dude Freek – yes, that’s his legal name – was one of 15 or so prospective students who came to a March 15 Cooley open house to hear what the law school had to offer. He’s currently studying social work at Michigan State University.

“I don’t want to go with the first school I visit, but I did get a good impression,” the DeWitt native said.

Cooley is still finding students, just far fewer. Last year, it had 1,067 applicants, down from more than 6,000 in 2010. It offered admission to 915 of them; 415 accepted.

It’s unclear how many of those will be going to school in Lansing. Cooley has three other campuses: in Grand Rapids; Auburn Hills; and Riverview, Florida, near Tampa.

But it’s evident now that the number won't be enough to buoy Lansing’s downtown nightlife.

Brannigan Brothers used to be a favored watering hole among Cooley students. When Doug Nylander took over the bar’s license in 2011, more than half of its business came from law students, he said.

“We had good numbers at that point with a good following among Cooley students,” Nylander said.

The bar closed in 2015. The declining student numbers weren’t the only reason. There was a murder trial involving a man who had worked there as a bouncer and multiple name changes besides. But it was a factor. Nylander sold the building last summer.

Cooley’s peak also came as a boon to local landlords like Richard Karp, owner of the Arbaugh building in downtown Lansing. In 2009, around nine out of every 10 of his tenants were Cooley students. Today, it’s less than two in 10. Cooley’s presence helped fill the building, Karp said, but its attractive location kept it from falling to the wayside when Cooley’s enrollment slid.

Pat Gillespie saw similar declines with his properties near downtown. His Prudden Place complex boasted around 40% Cooley student occupancy between 2008 and 2013. It’s just a handful today. Those students did more than pay rent and spend their nights studying for the bar.

“Cooley students were pedestrians downtown after 5 p.m.,” Gilespie said. “It felt more alive downtown, but that’s the impact when you lose a couple thousand people.”

Both Gillespie and Karp say young professionals have filled the apartments formerly occupied by Cooley students. What hasn’t been made up for is life downtown after 5 p.m. and on the weekends.

“It’s noticeable,” Gillespie said. “Insurmountable? No, but it definitely left a mark.”

Uncertain future

Cooley’s decline came as the students across the country were questioning the value of a legal education. The 2008 recession limited the job prospects for new lawyers. Wages were stagnant. Average law school debt was rising. Application numbers dropped sharply.

Fewer applications meant that law schools reached further into the applicant pool, admitting students who would have been rejected a few years prior.

Cooley is one of the least selective law schools in the country. More than 85% of those who applied last year received an offer. Many are students most other law schools would reject.

And it was particularly hurt by the heightened competition for students, said Derek Muller, a professor at the Pepperdine School of Law.

“It ends up leaving Cooley in a game of musical chairs without a seat,” he said.

It didn’t help that, in 2012, the American Bar Association began requiring schools to report employment figures for their recent graduates with greater precision.

Those figures made clear, for instance, that just 38% of the students who graduated from Cooley in 2011 found full-time, long-term work for which bar passage is required within nine months of graduation. The numbers for 2015 graduates were worse, only 27%.

“We’re not going to see the heyday from 2009, at least in the next decade,” Muller said. “Schools have to adjust to that.”

Cooley, to some extent, has adjusted. It cut dozens of full-time faculty members. It raised tuition and fees for full-time students from $34,340 in 2011 to $50,790 last year. And LeDuc took a pay cut. His compensation, which topped out at $675,000 in 2012, had dropped to $537,000 in 2014, according to IRS documents.

Cooley also began admitting students who might not have made the cut a few years prior. Cooley's leaders have long said their aim was to admit everyone who might possibly succeed in law school. But in 2011, the median LSAT score for Cooley's entering class was 146. Last year, it was 141. That score would be in the bottom 16% of everyone who took the LSAT in 2015.

Which hasn't help Cooley's bar passage rate, which dropped when Michigan made its exam harder five years ago and hasn't rebounded. In 2015, fewer than 60% of the Cooley graduates who took the Michigan bar exam for the first time passed, a full 12 percentage points behind the rest of the state.

That could mean problems down the road. The American Bar Association has been mulling the adoption of stricter standards for accreditation, requiring a 75% pass rate within two years of graduating.

If that change were to go through, it would be a death-blow to Cooley, said Paul Campos, a University of Colorado law professor who's been critical of Cooley on the blog Lawyers, Guns & Money.

In Campos’ view, Cooley’s lax admission standards in recent years amounted to, “admitting a class of 5-foot-3-inch basketball players and expecting them to go to the NBA. That’s not happening.”

Can the Cooley name survive?

Cooley and Western Michigan University signed the first of what would become several agreements to increasingly cooperate in 2013. The most noticeable change was the new name: The Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. Last fall, Cooley faculty began teaching at WMU’s Kalamazoo campus, and there are plans to offer dual degrees and fast-track programs for students.

“There’s always been a desire to have access to law degrees as an opportunity for students,” said John Dunn, whose term as president of WMU ends June 30.

Cooley’s Innocence Project, its location in Lansing, as well as its satellite campuses have massive value to WMU moving forward, he said.

The two schools have retained their financial and leadership independence, but Dunn drew parallels to Michigan State University’s relationship with the former Detroit College of Law as an example of what Cooley and WMU could accomplish.

The Detroit College of Law eventually moved its campus to East Lansing and changed its name to the Michigan State University College of Law. It’s technically separate from MSU with its own board of trustees, but MSU President Lou Anna Simon leads that board and serves as president of the law college.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if it happened with WMU and Cooley,” Dunn said. “Not in the least.”

There are no current plans to build a law school in Kalamazoo, he said. WMU already has space for Cooley staff. Cooley professors taught the first joint-program pre-law classes in Kalamazoo last fall.

As it is, students interested in becoming attorneys still have to attend a Cooley campus at some point, but the new programs are potentially making their time on those campuses shorter.

Seven years ago, Cooley paid just shy of $1.5 million for the naming rights for what is now Cooley Law School Stadium, the minor league baseball park in downtown Lansing. Those rights expire in 2021.

It's not clear that Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School would fit well on the sign. It's also not clear that Cooley would be in a position to re-up that commitment.

Beth LeBlanc contributed to this report.

Contact RJ Wolcott at (517) 377-1026 or rwolcott@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @wolcottr.

By the numbers

3,931: 2010 enrollment

1,285: 2016 enrollment

$123 million: 2010 revenue

$63 million: 2014 revenue:

440,000 square feet: Campus space in downtown Lansing

$537,568: President Don LeDuc’s 2014 compensation