[7] As of 2024, Cooley has failed to reach the 75% two year bar passage required of ABA Standard 316 for continued accreditation.
[14][15][16][17] The problems of funding and facilities raised at the Board of Education were not yet resolved but Brennan expressed confidence these issues would be worked out.
[21] Cooley renovated the former JCPenney building in downtown Lansing as the Thomas E. Brennan Law Library, opening in 1993.
[52] Cooley was found in 2022 to have a 59.51% ultimate bar passage rate for the Class of 2019, but was granted a two-year extension to meet the 316 standard subject to various conditions including working with faculty to improve teaching and learning, reviewing the effects of more rigorous grading policies, and making a “significant financial investment” in a “reliable plan” to ensure that the law school has resources to operate in compliance with the standard.
[5] It attracted national attention following the indictment and disbarment of Donald Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, a Cooley alumnus.
[61] Cooley operates programs allowing ABA-approved foreign study credit in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
In addition, students are able to study at ABA-approved programs in: Oxford, England; Santander, Spain; Toronto, Canada; Münster, Germany.
The Innocence Project is nationally recognized in the United States for helping free persons wrongfully incarcerated by obtaining DNA evidence and providing pro bono legal advocacy to overturn their convictions—Cooley's Innocence Project clinic has contributed to overturning four convictions.
[66][67][68][69] Cooley also offers an elder law clinic, Sixty Plus, Inc., which provides free legal services to senior citizens, as well as two Public Defender's clinics, which allow students to work in the Public Defender's office with indigent clients who are accused of committing a crime.
The Access to Justice Clinic provides a general civil practice, focusing on family and consumer law.
Evening and weekend students can gain experience in the Estate Planning Clinics or the Public Sector Law Project, which provides civil legal services of a transactional, advisory, legislative or systemic nature to governments.
[70] The total cost of attending Cooley (tuition, fees, and living expenses) for the 2022–2023 academic year is $66,706 to $69,506, depending on the campus.
[52] Thus, Cooley has failed to reach the 75% two year bar passage required of ABA Standard 316 for continued accreditation.
In May 2020, the council of the ABA's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar determined Cooley was among ten law schools that had failed to significantly comply with Standard 316, which was revised in 2019 to provide that at least 75% of an accredited law school's graduates who took a bar exam must pass one within two years of graduation.
The trial court observed in part that Cooley reporting a 76% employment rate was not objectively false, though it was based on survey returns rather than on all graduates, and that it did not distinguish between part- and full-time employment or legal vs non-legal jobs, and that "it would be unreasonable for Plaintiffs to rely on two-bare bones statistics in deciding to attend a bottom-tier law school with the lowest admission standard in the country".