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Welcome Message from the President
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Potomac Post Mortem
How the Potomac School of Law managed to limp through the year 1980, I shall never know, but by the spring of 1981, faced with a federal IRS lien of $60,000 for non payment of withholding taxes, the school was officially placed in bankruptcy.
It had long since been kicked out of the Watergate. The Georgia Supreme Court had tightened the requirements for entry into the bar of that state, denying Potomac graduates the only avenue open to them to enter the legal profession.
Warren Winstead resigned the presidency quite suddenly in late 1980. Irwin Shirwin finally came up with some actual cash; a $30,000 loan to the school, which he claimed was personally guaranteed by Winstead, whom he later sued for the money.
Hurley eventually obtained a judgment against the school for his severance pay. He later attempted to start a law school in Hudson, Wisconsin, to be called the St. Croix College of Law and when the St. Paul Pioneer Press wrote a scathing critique of his efforts, Hurley sued them, too.
The internal warfare at Potomac only heated up with the school’s declining ability to meet its obligations. Professors threatened to withhold grades from their students in an effort to force the students to support their demands against the administration.
The school’s only physical asset, its modest library, was in storage at the warehouse of the Virginia Van Lines being held there as security for the payment of some $40,000 in moving costs, with additional storage charges mounting daily.
Curiously, student initiated litigation was the one thing that didn’t happen. Perhaps they just didn’t have money for the filing fees. Or maybe they were disillusioned about the law as the ultimate dispenser of justice.
In addition to garnering a few lessons about fiscal responsibility, Cooley benefited by receiving a handful of Potomac students who were willing to start all over again as incoming freshmen.
A few of these had actually completed more than two years of study at Potomac. Still, under stringent ABA rules, we were unable to give them advance standing in our program
One of the transferees was Dennis Mark, the Potomac student board member who resigned with me that fateful afternoon in November of 1979. Dennis and I had become good friends during my Watergate days. He was, as I recall, from somewhere around Philadelphia, as was his roommate, a loveable, mischievous fellow known to his friends as "the bear."
Dennis and the bear came to Lansing together and eventually graduated. The bear missed the commencement ceremony, however, because he and his father had tried to hit every saloon between Scranton and Lansing, and they fell off the radar screen somewhere around State College.
Another fascinating character among the Potomac contingent was the Potomac student who so generously offered to clean up the law school to impress the ABA visitors. His name doesn’t matter. His story is worth telling. He had at least two years of law school under his belt when he came to Cooley. I expected that starting over would assure him a fairly easy time of it, with rather impressive grades.
Not so. To the extent that he thought he already knew the material, he committed himself to extra curricular activities. Possessed of a pleasing, ingratiating kind of charm, he won all kinds of friends in Lansing, and soon found himself enmeshed in the Student Bar Association and the Cooley Chapter of the ABA’s Law Student Division.
What with meetings and conventions, seminars and work shops, he had little time for his studies. Soon enough, he was in my office, crying the blues because he was on probation. I don’t know if he thought it would help, but he regularly showed up with gifts of Hungarian wine or some other gypsy delicacy sent by his sainted mother back east.
I seem to recall that his graduation from Cooley was delayed due to academic deficiency. Whether it was or not, I do remember that he failed the bar exam. Not once or twice. He failed it four or five times at least. I think he was engaged to a Lansing girl who would not set the date until he passed the bar.
One day he came to see me, distraught over yet another failure to pass the exam, and the break up with his fiancé. "Young man," I said, in my best fatherly tone of voice, "let’s face it. God doesn't want you to become a lawyer. Why not just give it up, go sell insurance and live happily ever after."
With tears of determination in his eyes, he left my office, still insisting that he was meant to be a lawyer.
Two years later he called to tell me he was an assistant prosecuting attorney in New Jersey. I was sure that some day he would be president of the local bar association.
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This Page was last updated on:
07/21/2006