Inflated Reputations

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Someone once asked me what the difference is between a lawyer and an attorney. An attorney, I told the fella, has a bigger head.

I don’t know whether Donald Trump’s former personal attorney (he actually seems more like a lawyer to me) is any good — the evidence suggests he isn’t — but I do know that just because he is a graduate of the alleged worst law school in America has extremely little bearing on that.

Cooley Law School, which is Michael Cohen’s alma mater and part of Western Michigan University, offers pretty much the same classes as Harvard Law School. The core curriculum is certainly the same, as it is for every accredited law school in the United States. There’s some little bother going on right now about whether Cooley will retain its American Bar Association accreditation, but let’s let the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan sort that out.

For now, Cooley actually offers some advantages that Harvard can’t even dream of. For one, it offers a law school aspirant who didn’t score 177 on the Law School Admission Test a chance to become the next Clarence Darrow (and, just so you know, Clarence Darrow never had to take an LSAT, and if he did have to take such a test would’ve never gotten anybody off of anything).

Remember Abraham Lincoln? That guy was home-schooled. Never would’ve had a chance today at Harvard, but probably would’ve made the cut at Cooley. Without schools like Cooley, for many the dream is dead on arrival at the test hall.

Does Harvard allow you to take all your classes on the weekends, so you can hold down a full-time job to pay for all that legal learning? I don’t think so. Cooley does.

Take a bunch of your classes online? At Cooley, no problem. Harvard professors need to see the terrified faces of their 1Ls. They can’t hand out a dime to call your mother and tell her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer if Crim Law is competing with Grand Theft Auto V for your online attention.

You really think Harvard Law School is so much better than Cooley? Anthony Scaramucci and Ted Cruz went to Harvard Law School.

In short, there are fine opportunities at so-called lesser schools that just aren’t available at so-called prestige law schools.

Like becoming personal lawyer to the President of the United States.

Oh. Wait.