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Welcome Message from the President
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A Clacking Distraction
The feelings of optimism and good will that were generated by Jim White's visit in late 1974 were soon dissipated. He had previously insisted that there would have to be another inspection of the law school before our request for provisional approval could be reconsidered at the February mid-winter meeting of the American Bar Association.
His reason? "It's our policy." O.K. If there must be another visitation, why not simply ask the last inspection team to return and update their findings? "It can't be done." And why not? "It's our policy."
The rules of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar required that the Council's interpretations and policies be published. Despite my repeated requests, no such publication was made available. We were merely expected to acquiesce in whatever Jim White said the policy was.
About this time, I decided that I needed to talk to a lawyer. No, I wasn't looking to sue anyone. I just wanted to sit down with somebody who was experienced in the practice of law as opposed to the world of legal academia. Somebody who would understand the process of negotiation, Somebody who could and would make a decision and stand firm on a commitment to accredit the school upon proof that we had cleaned up whatever punch list of requirements remained on the table.
I set up a dinner meeting at a hotel near O'Hare Airport in Chicago with two men I thought would listen: Sharpe Whitmore, a lawyer from Beverly Hills, California who had served for many years as the liaison between the Council and the House of Delegates of the ABA, and Richard Nahstall, a Portland, Oregon attorney, who was the Chairman-Elect of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.
It was a meeting I shall never forget. I believe that I hosted the dinner. I can't remember what we ate, though I'm sure it was to their liking. Conversation during the meal was mostly small talk, and as we sipped on coffee, I began to make my pitch. I tried to convey a sense of urgency and frustration. We were barely a year away from graduating our first class. We had been inspected and reinspected ad nauseam.
Wasn't there something that reasonable men of good will could agree upon to bring this seemingly interminable process to a conclusion?
My dinner companions sat and stared at me in stony silence. Every time I paused, asked a question, or invited a comment, the icy quietude was punctuated by the incessant clack, clack, clack of two spoons in Dick Nahstoll's left hand being pinched together. Over and over. For more than an hour. Every word I spoke had to compete with his hostile clacking. At one point, I stopped and simply stared at the spoons in his hand, hoping he would see how annoying it was. I have no doubt that, later, they had a good chuckle about frazzling the judge with the old clacking spoon trick.
As trying and unproductive as the dinner was, its conclusion spiked my blood pressure even more. Sharpe Whitmore off handedly observed that the Accreditation Committee would be meeting on January 16 and the Council on January 18 to consider the accreditation of law schools.
I was shocked. Jim White and I had agreed on January 12 through 15 as the dates for our next inspection visit. It was my impression that the first opportunity for us to be considered was in February. Now the committee was meeting a month earlier. If we were to get on their agenda, there would be only 24 hours for the inspectors to prepare their report.
On December 10, I spoke to Jim White on the phone. We agreed on two inspectors, Dean Lindsey Cowen of Case Western Reserve and Dean Gordon Schaber of McGeorge Law School. He suggested two others with whom I was not familiar. I checked their backgrounds and read some of their writings. Both were establishment academics. On December 11, I wrote to Jim White and told him that the other two nominees were unacceptable, and suggested that we go forward with Cowen and Schaber as a two man team.
His reply arrived five days later. It concluded with this chilling paragraph:
"Chairman Nahstoll and I have agreed that if the inspection team, as suggested by me in my conversation with you on December 10, is not to be accorded by you and your colleagues the acceptance and cooperation necessary to its task, we will have no alternative but to remove the Thomas M. Cooley Law School from inspection schedule at this time and schedule an inspection at a future but indefinite time."
I replied on December 17:
"Your threat to postpone inspection of Cooley Law School indefinitely unless we surrender our right to agree to the nomination of inspectors is unauthorized by the Council and the House of Delegates."
Then I quoted the ABA's Procedural Rule 1(6):
"If the school feels that it does meet the Standards, a request for a visit by an inspector, at the school's expense, is in order. Thereafter, arrangements
will be made for a visit to the school at a mutually satisfactory time by an
inspector agreeable to the school."
I thought the rule was pretty clear.
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This Page was last updated on:
12/03/2004