Yesterday, I posted answers to the most common questions I get about my alma mater, Thomas M. Cooley Law School. My friend and colleague, Alex O'Brien (a very cool guy, I might add, who is going to be an excellent attorney in case you want to gobble him up for your firm), recently penned a piece for the Cooley school newspaper, The Pillar, and he gave me permission to put it here. It fits in nicely with what I had to say yesterday, although it's geared more toward first-term Cooley students than those considering law school. He calls it, "Signs of the Drowing Man":

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When I was in Marine Corps Boot Camp, we spent close to a week going to the pool every day. Now, before you begin to believe that Marine Corps Boot Camp is a cushy assignment, let me explain: We spent each day in what was perhaps the largest indoor pool that I have ever seen, in full battle gear, getting “Combat Water Survival Qualified.”

One very basic lesson pounded through my thick skull that week was the “Drowning Man”: Never get within an arm’s distance of a drowning man. A drowning man panics when he realizes that he is about to go under. The drowning man will grab anything that is within arm’s reach and try to climb on top of it in order to keep himself afloat. If that thing is YOU, then the drowning man will literally push you under water in order to save himself. You can throw him a flotation device or a rope, but never get within an arm’s distance of a drowning man.

Shortly before I started at Cooley, I heard its educational style described as sink or swim. This of course brought to mind the lesson of the drowning man. From my first term, I resolved myself to staying away from the “Drowning Students” at Cooley.

My first list of signs of the drowning student was simple, and contained the most obvious things that most of us easily recognize: Spending more time socializing than studying, conducting study group sessions at the bar, and having a generally negative attitude. On this journey through law school, I have discovered the recurrent themes of the “Drowning Man.”

Now, I’m not trying to debunk anything here. One trait of a good lawyer is the ability to critically think about information presented. Most of the stories used as examples in this article do not stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. However, some may have a grain of truth to them.

I must admit, in negative moments I’ve caught some of these Cooley urban legends passing my lips. Just because someone makes a splash in the pool, does not mean they are drowning. However, if you recognize a disturbing number of these themes coming from a friend or loved one, throw them a rope or a life preserver. But if you are barely treading water yourself, don’t let them grab you and take you down with them.

1) DEFERRAL OF RESPONSIBILITY –or— It’s not my fault. The professor screwed me, see? The book was terrible, and the SBA outline sucked.

Many Professors consider this the most reliable sign of the “drowning man.” It is usually a sure sign that the student has not identified the real problem. The student knows they are going down, that everything is going wrong, and they can’t possibly believe, let alone admit, that they’ve made a mistake. Usually, it becomes pretty obvious to everyone what’s really going on. Most of the following themes can usually be combined with this theme.

2) ALL THE WORK IS UNNECESSARY –or- Real Attorneys never use this stuff. A guy from my Criminal Law section told me that his father is an attorney, that his father told him that he will never use any of this in practice, that if in a real courtroom an attorney actually said “Mens Rea,’ the attorney would be laughed out of the building. Thus, there was no real reason to know Mens Rea. Real attorneys don’t use Mens Rea. Besides, The Professor will only test you on the hard stuff, so you don’t really need to know the basic stuff like future interests or promissory estoppels. So don’t waste your time briefing the cases, (book brief if you must), writing an outline (the SBA has plenty.) The professor goes over everything that you need to know at the review.

Most 3Ls nod their head when the truth of this rumor comes out; making it through Cooley is not about how smart you are, it’s about how hard you work. If people are trying to convince you that getting through Cooley requires no work for them, it is one of the signs of the “Drowning Man.”

3) UNFAIR GRADING –or— The infamous "Cooley Curve". There is no anonymous grading. The professors can recognize your handwriting. The professors don’t have any control over their grades, the school tells them roughly how many A’s, B’s, C’s and D’s to hand out. The students who get the extra time are the ones who get the A’s, so if you don’t get extra time, you can’t get any better than a C. In fact, first-term professors are required to fail a certain percentage of the first-term class, to thin the class down.

This is a sure sign to many Professors that the student is drowning. The student is essentially stating that the class is too hard instead of doing what they need to pass. The student wants you to believe, that no matter how hard you try in the class, you won’t do any better than a C, thus you should not put in any more effort than you would if you knew you were guaranteed a C.

4) BLEAK FUTURE –or— The Sky is Falling. Haven’t you heard? Nobody hires Cooley grads! Cooley doesn’t prepare you for the bar exam. Most Cooley grads can’t pass the bar, can’t get a job, can’t pay their student loans, and have to lie in job interviews and say that they went to another law school. Cooley has a terrible reputation in the real world! So a JD from Cooley won’t be any good anyways.

This theme is the favorite of the pessimist. The point essentially is that we won’t get what we want, so why bother trying? The problem arises when the person uttering these words needs you not only to believe them, but to agree with them. I have such a hard time personally understanding how it is that a person can be driven to come so far in life, only to give up in the face of a heavy load of -- reading.

5) THE COOLEY CONSPIRACY –or- The school is out to get you. The admissions office, the ARC, the Registrar, Financial Aid, the Career Services Office, the Professors, Professor Buttrey, Dr. Wilson, Dean Timmer, and even President Don LeDuc are out to get you, personally. Their purpose in life is to ruin yours, to single you out and dismiss you from law school. (Oh, and watch what you say in front of Vivian in the Cooley Center or Katie in the Classroom building, they are tape recording everything that you say and reporting to the Star Chamber.) Cooley is here to take you in, get as much money as they can from you, and kick you out, not to educate you in the law. That’s why they make it impossible to transfer to a different school.

These conspiracy theories can be as varied and as colorful as the teller of the tale. They all include the idea that there is a trap that students fall into, and can’t get out of. They always have just enough of an element of truth to them to make them plausible. One of the traits of a good attorney is the ability to critically examine information presented. Just like any other conspiracy theorist, you may want to keep an arms distance.

It does not matter if each and every of the above cited rumors were true. A person could have clear and convincing evidence that it’s not their fault, that the Prof. did screw them, that attorneys never this in practice, that the class is graded on a C-curve dictated by the administration, that there is some massive “X-Files” style conspiracy by the administration, and that Cooley JD’s are less valuable than U of M or MSU JD’s, my point remains. There is only one way to avoid drowning: You must keep swimming.

Singularly, these themes are on the lips of most Cooley students at some point or another. The sign of a “drowning man” is not that someone feels like this once in a while. The sign of the “drowning man” is when you hear a lot of this type of theme coming from someone on a consistent basis. If that’s the case, throw them a rope, toss them a life preserver, but don’t get too close. Don’t go down with them.

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Words to live by, no matter what law school you attend, don't you think? My thanks to Alex for that fine piece, and for giving me permission to post it. Alex, incidentally, was on my team when we went to Pittsburgh for the ATLA national mock trial competition, and he was amazing in the courtroom, and I am sincere about all the props this man gets. If you want to know what kind of graduates Cooley can put out, you need look no further.

'Nuff said.