 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Welcome Message from the President
|
Frustration in Chicago
Back in 1971 when I initially proposed to starting a law school, my former law teacher, Stanley Beattie, mentioned the name of Harold Gill Reuschlein, founding dean of the Villanova School of Law, suggesting that he would be a valuable resource. Now, in the summer of 1974, I was to encounter Professor Reuschlein for the first time. He was then the chairman of the accreditation committee of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar of the American Bar Association.
The accreditation committee and the council of the section would meet during the ABA's annual meeting in Chicago during the week of July 17. We assiduously prepared leather bound agenda books for each of the committee members, embossed with their names. Or so we thought. On arriving at the meeting, I discovered that we had neglected to prepare a book for one person, Harold Reuschlein, the chairman! Of course, we had an extra book which we gave him, but it was obvious that the slight to the chairman was a much larger negative than the embossed books for all the others would offset.
Our meeting with the accreditation committee began as all accreditation meetings seem to begin. With an hour long wait outside the door. When we were finally invited inside, there were ten people around a large table. I took a chair, and on invitation, launched into a description of the qualifications of our teachers, since the fact that we had not hired teachers from other law schools seemed to be a sticking point.
When I finished, I was asked some leading questions which pretty much told me what the committee were thinking. Didn't I have problems functioning both as president and dean? Why did I think practicing lawyers would be better teachers than experienced law teachers who had never practiced? How many of our students had full time jobs? And what did I have to say about the inspectors' comment that I didn't buy into the ABA's philosophy of legal education?
After an hour of this sort of adversarial banter, we were dismissed. No clue as to when we would hear about their decision. No mention of what would happen next. We hung around outside the door for the rest of the day and all of the following day, Friday, July 19. The executive director and the president of the Association of American Law Schools were allowed into the committee room, but we were not. No representative of Cooley would be in the room when they acted on our petition for approval.
At 6:30 that evening, I tracked down Jim White, who told me that the committee had not recommended provisional accreditation; that it had passed a three page resolution, then being prepared. Within the hour, I had a copy of it. I got back in Jim White's face. I had learned through another source that Cooley Law School was on the agenda of the Council of the Section of Legal Education the following morning. Was that true? Yes, Professor White confirmed that we would have and opportunity to go before the Council, if, after reading the accreditation committee's resolution, we still wanted to. I read it, and I wanted to.
That night, I called my friend Jim Brickley, then Lieutenant Governor of Michigan. I thought he might add a little weight to our presentation. One of Cooley's first teachers, he had a Master's Degree in Law from New York University. Once again we cooled our heels outside the meeting room for over an hour. When the summons came, we found ourselves sitting in chairs that lined one wall of the room, addressing a table ringed with Council members an a few others.
One member of the council stands out in my memory. Soia Mentschikoff, a graduate of Columbia Law School and the first woman partner in a major New York law firm, was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School even before women were admitted there. Moving on to the University of Chicago Law School, she met and married academic icon Karl Llewellyn. Later in 1974 she would become President of the Association of American Law Schools, and Dean of the University of Miami School of Law.
Professor Mentschikoff, for all her erudition, simply could not understand Cooley's three divisional, year-round academic program. Or at least she pretended not to. For nearly forty-five minutes, she grilled me with mumbo-jumbo questions that confused our terms with our divisions, our courses with our classes, and our unique three semester academic year with typical summer school education.
I kept my cool, at least ostensibly. But inside, I was madder than hell. I had, for more than a dozen years, listened to lawyers argue their cases. Some very top advocates. I saw a lot of obfuscation and question-begging in the courtroom. I had plenty of experience with the give and take of an appellate court, both with counsel in the courtroom and with each other in the conference room. I had never heard a more partisan, closed-minded, performance than she gave that day. For a woman with such stellar credentials, her conduct was bush league, to say the least.
I would soon learn that Soia Mentschikoff was only one of the good ol' boys who drove the ABA accreditation bus anywhere they damn well wanted to.
Back to Founder's page
Admissions | Financial Aid | Academics | Grand Rapids Campus | Rochester/Oakland Campus
Library | Bookstore | Information Technology | Clinical | Career Services
Faculty | Students | Alumni | News & Events | Overview | Search Cooley | Contact Us
This Page was last updated on:
08/19/2004