Well, Archie, several issues are packed in there rather tightly, and I have to confess that it was intentional to pack a lot in. This was done with the expectation that the average Slashdot reader will be up to the task presented. Many Slashdot readers seem to "get it" without quite so much difficulty, but let me help unpackage some of the issues for you. Before I begin, let me say that I have many valued friends and professional colleagues who attended Cooley and who secured their law degrees from this school. I am not interested in criticizing Cooley's academic program (I'll leave it to others to form their own opinions), and my primary focus is about their counter-productive litigation strategy.
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1. The real, central, issue here is actually much broader than Cooley. It involves what some (like PayPal co-founder and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel) have started describing as a "higher education bubble" or a "student loan bubble" -- after comparing trends in debt-financed education, to the recent collapse of the housing bubble. If the predicted collapse materializes (and the jury is out on whether it will), then you tell me whether Cooley has improved or harmed its chances to keep a low profile when stuff hits the fan. It is certainly premature, today, to predict who might be viewed, in a few months or a few years, to be the Angelo Mozillo or the Countrywide of the education industry. But you are invited to consider this subject, investigate the facts for yourself, and to make up your own mind.
2. The next level down is a phenomenon that has been called "The Streisand Effect" -- a phrase coined by TechDirt's Mike Masnick to encapsulate the paradoxical observation that lawsuits seeking to suppress expression on the Internet, routinely seem to backfire, and often result in the viral amplification of the messages of critics, rather than the result sought by companies like Cooley. Incidentally, the initial submission (which was edited a bit by Timothy) asked an additional question, which Timothy omitted, which is this: Is the example of Cooley's backfiring lawsuit such a good example of this phenomenon, the we might even want to consider updating Masnick's neologism to "The Cooley Effect," rather than "The Streisand Effect?" Personally, I vote for "The Cooley Effect."
3. The lawsuit was actually against several individuals who published material on the Internet. The principal blogger (whose handle is Rockstar05), went to Cooley and can speak from direct experience about what it is like to be a Cooley student. The blogger is a classic dis-satisfied customer. Rockstar05, at least based on published accounts, transferred out of Cooley in order to attend some other law school. The lawsuit has been filed *against* the blogger, and has been filed by two lawyers at the Miller, Canfield, law firm, at the request of Cooley law school. It is helpful to keep track of who is doing what -- the blogger used to be from Cooley, and probably had nothing to do with Georgetown. One of the blogger's adversaries, trying to unmask him or her, graduated from Georgetown University Law Center.
4. One of the delicious and subtle ironies, in this case, is how Cooley (which, presumably, had a lot of lawyers to choose among, because Cooley generates a lot of revenue and can pay top dollar) elected not to hire one of its own graduates, but rather a pair of lawyers who graduated from other programs that Cooley's own promotional literature routinely purports to rank lower than Cooley. This is a very minor issue, and I'm sorry if that's what got you confused. It is just too amusing not to point out.
5. The other, much bigger, policy issue that needs to be addressed, is truth-in-admissions standards not just for law schools, but for higher education, generally. You can decide for yourself whether Cooley's information practices toward prospective students (including, but hardly limited to, the "Cooley Rankings" issued for the past 12 years), actually meet the standards that customers making what often will be the most important investment decision of their entire lives, have a right to expect.
I've written something a bit longer, that covers all of these issues and a few more, in somewhat more detail, and that does not try to cram it all into 3 or 4 sentences.
Having previously advised clients who are upset about things posted on the Internet, I respectfully have to say that I would have given Cooley some very different advice about its best course of action -- based on the circumstances in which it found itself, prior to the filing of the lawsuit. In this case, not only does Cooley face a high risk that its chosen litigation strategy will backfire badly, but quite frankly Cooley deserves it, if such an eventuality comes to pass.
