Category Archives: Faculty Scholarship

Cooley has one of the largest and most experienced faculty in the nation. Faculty members come to Cooley with years of experience in the practice of law. They combine “real world” knowledge with exceptional academic backgrounds. The full-time faculty make Cooley an outstanding legal education program. They are professionals dedicated to the ideals of practical legal scholarship and academic excellence.

by | May 16, 2013 · 3:00 pm

Cooley People

vuletich_victoria

Professor Victoria Vuletich teaches Professional Responsibility at Cooley Law School.  She is chairperson of the ABA’s Center for Professional Responsibility Continuing Legal Education Committee. Before joining Cooley’s faculty in 2008, Professor Vuletich was Deputy Division Director of the State Bar of Michigan Professional Standard’s Division, where she advised attorneys regarding ethical dilemmas and practical issues they were facing.  She also served as staff counsel to the State Bar of Michigan Client Protection and Unauthorized Practice of Law programs and developed and managed the Practice Management Resource Center.

Someone once said that people who love people are the luckiest people in the world.  (O.K. it was Barbra Streisand who sang that, but I hate disclosing that as it negates my cool, hip image.  Well, all right, as cool and hip as an Ethics Professor can get.)  There isn’t a day that goes by at Cooley when I don’t feel like the luckiest person in the world. And many of my faculty colleagues feel the same way.

Through Cooley I have met the most interesting and wonderful people.  My boyfriend is always urging me to invite more students for dinner as he enjoys getting to know the rich and diverse array of people at Cooley.

Here’s what I am talking about.  This is the second week of classes.  In my Lansing class there is:

- a former sportscaster

- someone who wants to be an agricultural lawyer

- a person who ran a coffee shop for ten years

- a folk musician

- a person who collects presidential election memorabilia

- a person whose favorite season is winter

- a significant number of obsessed sports fans.

In my Grand Rapids, class, there is:

- a person who had a robin build her nest in his barbeque grill

- a cake decorator

- a rugby player

- someone who speaks fluent Chinese

- a significant number of folks who are animal lovers

- a significant number of people whose lifelong dream is to be a lawyer.

In every class there are people who hail from all around the world:  this term I have students from South Korea, Trinidad, Tobago, and Canada. Although I am just getting to know my students this term, I already find them fascinating.  By the end of the term when I have gotten to know some of them better, my life will be incredibly enriched.   And thanks to Facebook, I can see how their careers and personal lives blossom long after they have left Cooley.   It thrills me no end to see the marriages, babies, promotions and moves to other venues.

I am indeed a very lucky person!

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by | April 10, 2013 · 10:00 am

Equity & Remedies and the Bar Exam

Prof. Otto Stockmeyer

Emeritus Professor Otto Stockmeyer has been teaching Equity & Remedies for three decades at Cooley and two other law schools.  He has just finished his last class in the Land Down Under as part of Cooley’s Foreign Study Program. 

One of the reasons that Cooley – alone among Michigan’s five law schools – makes Equity & Remedies a required course is its value for bar-prep purposes.  Equity or Remedies or both are listed by 22 states as tested on the essay portion of their bar exam, including the biggies: New York, California, and Michigan.

Some other states (including Florida) do not separately test Equity or Remedies on their bar exams, but indicate that the topics could be tested as a component of other officially listed subjects.

bar exam

Moreover, the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) tests both rights and remedies embodied in Contracts, Property, and Tort law.

And 26 states plus the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories now use the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), and the list is growing.  On the MEE, Remedies can appear as part of several listed topics, including Contracts, Federal Civil Procedure, and Real Property.

This is undoubtedly why Prof. Tracy Thomas, who has taught Remedies for more than a decade, reports that “the number one comment I get from former students and alumni [is] that Remedies helped them get ready for and feel good about the bar exam.”  Tracy Thomas, Teaching Remedies as Problem-Solving: Keeping it Real, 57 Saint Louis University Law Journal __ (2013) (forthcoming) (available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2209791).

My experience has been similar.  That’s one reason why I like to think of our Equity & Remedies course as the “dessert of the required curriculum,” best savoured last.  Do Cooley alums agree?  I welcome your comments.

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by | March 22, 2013 · 4:00 pm

Professions Moving in Opposite Directions

Nelson P. Miller, Associate Dean for the Grand Rapids Campus and Professor of Law

Nelson P. Miller, Associate Dean for the Grand Rapids Campus and Professor of Law

By Nelson P. Miller

Associate Dean, Grand Rapids Campus

The medical profession and law profession are moving in opposite directions.

Hospital systems, healthcare insurers, or hybrid entities like managed-care organizations have been hiring physicians at record pace.  Fewer new physicians enter private medical practices, especially solo practices, where they would get to know and care long-term for individual patients.  More physicians work directly for massive corporate employers within regulatory and business systems that influence, dictate, and constrain care.  With this trend, the day of the family doctor passes quietly.  We now administer our own healthcare through networks of labs, clinics, and specialists, or rely on family members, social workers, and nursing homes to do so for us.  Medicine is no longer about access to a doctor.  Our medical care depends instead on our ability to move timely and efficiently from service provider to service provider with the right healthcare program and personal health information.

While medicine becomes centralized, law decentralizes.  Corporate clients see inefficiencies in the centralized cost structures of large law firms.  Large downtown offices under expensive leases, filled with layers of lawyers and non-lawyer staff, seem no longer so necessary.  Unlike hospitals and healthcare, law firms do not depend on huge pieces of medical-imaging equipment, expensive surgical suites, or even electronically monitored bed wards.  Lawyers now work productively anywhere an electronic signal reaches.  Law firms now assign lawyers to work in their corporate clients’ offices and permit other lawyers to telecommute.  Law firms maintain show offices in city centers but move the workforce to less-expensive warehouses and suburbs.  Large firms either get larger in order to offer more clients more offices in more locations or get smaller in order to serve fewer clients in narrower niches more locally.

Likewise, while medicine becomes a faceless set of technical procedures, law instead depends more than ever on the individual lawyer’s practice and presence.  Both individuals and corporations want and need trusted advisors.  They need individual lawyers who see their lives and concerns holistically, helping them make informed judgments while awash in masses of data in seas of uncertainty.  As information explodes and finance, business, sales, trade, employment, and regulation grow exponentially more complex, more procedures and information simply will not do.  To make sense of lives, relationships, trends, interests, and events, clients instead need individual counselors wise in the world’s ways.  Clients need face time with their lawyer.

New lawyers sense and grab this opportunity.  New law graduates return to school with eyes wide, sharing stories about the help they were immediately able to provide individual and corporate clients facing complex problems.  They know the satisfaction of supplying individual expertise at critical moments in their clients’ concerns.  They see the client wealth and welfare that their counsel preserves, promotes, and generates.  Before long, they will have the pleasure of witnessing the rising arc of their clients’ lives and interests long term, as their own practices grow and mature in step with their long-term clients.  This opposite trend makes me glad to be a lawyer and not a doctor.  Nothing against medical practice, but law practice looks pretty good right now.

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by | March 15, 2013 · 1:30 pm

Supreme Court Limits Federal Court Role in Patent-Related Disputes

Professor David Berry

Professor David Berry

 Professor David Berry teaches Intellectual Property courses in Cooley’s J.D. and LL.M. programs.  In this posting he discusses an important recent U.S. Supreme Court case involving federal jurisdiction.

In February’s 9-0 decision in Gunn v. Minton, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state law action that includes a substantive issue of federal patent law must be heard in state court, not federal court. The decision may allow state courts to determine patent issues which in the past were the exclusive province of the federal courts.

Gunn involved a state-court action for legal malpractice relating to a failed patent infringement litigation. The patentee, Minton, lost the infringement case when the trial court ruled that his patent was invalid for violating the “on-sale” bar. Gunn, Minton’s attorney in the infringement action, argued that the on-sale bar did not apply under the experimental use exception. Minton subsequently sued Gunn for malpractice under Texas state law. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that because the malpractice claim turned on whether the experimental use exception would have saved the patent, Minton’s malpractice claim “arose under” the federal Patent Act, and thus was subject to exclusive federal jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1338(a).

The Supreme Court reversed. The Court held that the patent issue was not “significant,” because the outcome of the issue would not affect the “federal system as a whole.” Essentially, the Court reasoned that Minton’s patent was invalid, and the state court’s determination of the experimental use issue could not change that result. Second, the Court ruled that allowing a federal court to hear the malpractice claim would disrupt the balance between federal and state courts established by Congress. Specifically, the Court noted that state courts have a special interest in deciding cases relating to the conduct of attorneys licensed in the state. Thus, the federal court lacked jurisdiction, and Minton’s claim must be decided in the Texas state courts.

Under Gunn, other cases involving patent issues which are currently heard in federal courts may be sent to state courts. These include breach of contract actions relating to patent licenses and commercial disparagement cases based on allegations of infringement. For a fuller discussion of the Gunn v. Minton case, and whether the Court’s decision addresses the practical and policy concerns resulting from state court jurisdiction over patent law issues, read Prof. Berry’s paper, “Gunn v. Minton: The Supreme Court Pokes Another Hole In Exclusive Federal Jurisdiction Over Patent Rights,” available on SSRN ID 2232879.

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by | January 18, 2013 · 5:00 pm

Greetings From Hamilton, New Zealand

Prof. Otto Stockmeyer

Emeritus Professor Otto Stockmeyer is teaching this term in Cooley’s study aboard program in Hamilton, New Zealand.  He received the Socrates Award from the Hellenic Bar Association for effective use of the Socratic method of teaching and was the first recipient of the Cooley Student Bar Association’s Barristers Award for contributions to student-faculty relations.

 What a pleasure it is to be teaching in Cooley’s study abroad program in New Zealand this term.  Let me take you on a short photographic tour.

First is a photo of my Equity & Remedies students in the classroom we are using at the University of Waikato, where I also enjoy the use of a well-equipped office.

Class

Next is the lovely entrance to the law school building.

Law School Entrance

Students enjoy lunch and the chance to relax on a patch of campus near the law school building.

Lunch on the Lawn

Outside our apartment on Victoria Street in downtown Hamilton, which is party central for the 30,000 college students who attend its three institutions of higher learning.

Apartment

Our students enjoyed the Cooley-sponsored trip to the black-sand beach at Ragland on the Tasman Sea, which is renown for the finest left-curling surfing waves in the Southern Hemisphere — no, it has nothing to do with how water spins down the drain!

Beach

As Professor Terry Cavanaugh constantly warns me, one must always remember to look right, not left, for oncoming traffic before crossing the street.

Look for Cars

It is 80 degrees here today, a splendid early summer day.  All is well.  – Otto

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by | January 17, 2013 · 10:00 am

A Lawyer’s Lesson on Sandy Hook

Nelson P. Miller, Associate Dean for the Grand Rapids Campus and Professor of Law

Nelson P. Miller, Associate Dean for the Grand Rapids Campus and Professor of Law

By Nelson P. Miller

Associate Dean, Grand Rapids Campus

What should a lawyer think about the lesson of the horrific homicides of Sandy Hook? How does the law school’s mission connect, if at all, with the lesson of that nearly unimaginably violent and disturbing event in which 20 young schoolchildren died at the hands of a mad and suicidal gunman?

Reflective individuals and organizations–especially schools–across the country must find a lesson in Sandy Hook.  To ignore an event of its kind is to give up a piece of our humanity.  In ignoring the event, we may also miss an opportunity to serve our clients better or, in the law school’s case, to prepare students better for practice.

A lawyer’s mission includes the client’s prosperity, which includes the client’s protection.  In too many cases, a lawyer’s work involves encountering and overcoming Sandy Hook-like evil.  Lawyers are no strangers to violence.  With hundreds of U.S. children dying from abuse each year, the law school certainly has graduates who prosecute (and other graduates who defend) individuals who are charged with heinous crimes that look far too much like small Sandy Hooks. Lawyers deal daily with protective orders against sexual abuse and torture, civil orders addressing child abuse and neglect, and criminal responsibility and civil liability for murder, wrongful death, and rape.

We should not be blind to what we face.  The law profession helps its members fight and overcome Sandy Hook-like evil, both through prevention and through redress.  The law school prepares its graduates to join in that work.  If we cannot help one another fight the evil that we encounter in practice, and give one another a protective sense of mission in overcoming it, then we will have failed in something essential to our purpose as a profession.  As lawyers, we have peculiar means to perceive and disarm threats, and peculiarly redemptive means to address their awful consequences when we fail to perceive and prevent them.

That may be the lesson of Sandy Hook, a lawyer’s lesson to be sure, that we must act responsibly as vigilant guardians of the young, weak, and powerless.  The lesson of Sandy Hook is a call again to arms borne by the law school’s graduates every day.  Those arms, including justice, civility, care, foresight, prudence, protection, and (above all) law, are not the physical kind the killer used at Sandy Hook.  Yet in these and other violent times, they are arms nonetheless – and powerful ones at that.  I will call them “moral-arms.” May the school’s graduates bear those moral-arms securely, skillfully, and wisely that we not have another Sandy Hook soon.  May the law school prepare its students well to join graduates in that special work.

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by | November 24, 2012 · 10:00 am

Law School Success Tips Have Proven Validity

 

Prof. Otto Stockmeyer

Emeritus Professor Otto Stockmeyer received the Socrates Award from the Hellenic Bar Association for effective use of the Socratic method of teaching and was the first recipient of the Cooley Student Bar Association’s Barristers Award for contributions to student-faculty relations.

 When Emeritus Professor Otto Stockmeyer tells students how to succeed in law school, he has the data to back up his advice.

Take his admonition to never miss class.  Using courses taught at Cooley and two other law schools, he compared class attendance and grades and found a strong positive correlation.  On average, almost half a grade level separated those students with perfect attendance from those who “maxed out” their allotted absences.  See his article “Better Grades @ No Extra Cost.”

His advice to brief every case and not rely on “canned” briefs was confirmed when Professor Stockmeyer looked at a sampling of Casenote Legal Briefs in his subject, Contracts.  He found them to be inadequate, unreliable, and dead-bang wrong on occasion.  For details, see “My Encounter with Canned Briefs.”

Professor Stockmeyer also encourages students to visit TWEN (The West Education Network) often.  TWEN is website hosting course discussion forums, links to CALI (Computer Assisted Legal Instruction) lessons, and review quizzes.  He found that, on average, students who received Honors level grades (a B or above) accessed his Contracts II TWEN site with much greater frequency than students whose grades put them on academic probation (a C or below).  The results of his research were reported in “Link Between Course Website Use and Law School Grades Confirmed, published in Michigan Computer Law in 2003.

Earlier, researching the effect of class size on student grades, Professor Stockmeyer found that when class size increases, student performance, as measured by grade-point averages, declines. See his piece,  “The Effect of Class Size on Student Performance.”  This finding, like his others, may seem self-evident.  But many students prefer the anonymity of larger classes, with lesser chances of being called on.

So when students are told to attend every class, write their own briefs, use TWEN regularly, and rejoice when called on, they should know that it’s advice they can rely on to perform at their best.

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by | November 2, 2012 · 9:42 am

Greetings From Belgrade

Prof. Paul Carrier

Prof. Paul Carrier

By Professor Paul Carrier

Professor Paul Carrier has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship – his second – to teach International Law at the University of Belgrade in Serbia.  He is writing a series of posts about his  experiences.

Greetings from Belgrade! On assignment at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, I had the good fortune to meet with the President of the Serbian Bar Association recently. There are some very exciting legal happenings afoot.  Along with teaching and skills course work, I will try to lend a hand and to learn as much as I can about a national bar in the state of transition. I may also pick up a few tips and pointers regarding an international extradition case.

The Serbian Bar Association is an independent organization promulgating and enforcing the rules of admission and membership since 1868. There are eight regional bar associations for the eight administrative regions in the country, with a Council comprised of members of each regional bar association. Authority to self-govern was granted by the Ministry of Justice, and the main governing body is the Council. (The bar associations of Kosovo and of Metohija are currently not involved in Serbian Bar Association activities due to their steps to become self-governing and fully autonomous regions).

Current issues facing the national bar are a new, voluntary continuing legal education training system responding to EU requirements for accession into the union and a ruling by the national constitutional court that arguably establishes government control over licensing in contravention of the nearly 150 years of autonomy. With regard to the former, a new voluntary system of continuing legal education is set to take effect for the legal bar, with the possible implementation of a mandatory system in due course. The early focus is on criminal law and criminal procedure as the country undergoes transformation from a civil-law advocacy system to a more adversarial one. Of utmost priority is training of attorneys in criminal procedure, especially for witness examination, cross-examination, the use of leading questions, and related matters. Following these efforts, the Advokatska Komora Srbije (AKS) will turn to training regimes for other major practice areas (called “katedra” here, or major practice areas) such as civil law and international law.

A recent decision by the constitutional court has now put into question the autonomy of the AKS. Serbian law only allows review of administrative issues, and not substantive ones. The issue then is one of the separation of powers, i.e., whether it is the Ministry of Justice or some other governmental agency or court to act as the final arbiter of AKS rules and practice, or whether it will remain with the bar association as it has for the last 150 years.

The AKS is also attempting to license, govern and discipline all lawyers in Serbia. Currently, the AKS only has authority over attorneys at law, and not judges or prosecutors, who have their own rule-making and standards-enforcing systems. The AKS also does not have authority over in-house counsel, who are governed and sanctioned in their dealings at commercial courts by their own corporate employers.

The AKS President is involved in an extradition request on an Interpol warrant for a dual citizen of the United States and of Israel involving an international extradition treaty.

Finally, I am also supervising an extern working at a Belgrade business law firm in addition to my duties at the Faculty of Law. In addition to the truly unique legal issues that I am learning here, I will be trying to open more doors to rewarding externship opportunities.

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by | September 7, 2012 · 5:00 pm

Gone Abroad, But Hardly a Stranger in a Strange Land

Prof. Paul Carrier

Prof. Paul Carrier

By Professor Paul Carrier

Professor Paul Carrier has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship – his second – to teach International Law at the University of Belgrade in Serbia.  This is the inaugural post in a series that will recount his experiences.  Professor Carrier has for years made important contacts around the world on behalf of Cooley.  Cooley students should in particular note the wonderful international externship opportunities available to them.

I just finished a three-week intensive Slovak language course offered by the Philosophy Faculty, Comenius University, Slovak Republic as a way to refresh my connection to Central European languages and culture. I have also met or corresponded with a variety of former colleagues and friends in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Austria. Their professions range from former law clerks who worked with me, to Slovak judges who I have met and taught Legal English, to the named partner of a Viennese arbitration firm who has already accepted three externs from Cooley. 

One of my goals was to try to put myself back into the right frame of mind, culturally and linguistically, as I am about to embark on a teaching assignment with the Faculty of Law at the University of Belgrade in Serbia.

Another goal was to continue professional relationships as a way to establish externship opportunities in international law for Cooley students who would like to gain legal experience abroad.

Externships that I have helped to establish include law firms in Bucharest, Romania; Beijing, China; Singapore; and, now, Belgrade, Serbia. Cooley has a truly unique and highly professional externship program. To date, every externship site that I have worked with has been pleased with their Cooley externs, and, though some are on-again, off-again due to student interest, all are willing to consider future externs from Cooley. The only hurdle that I have experienced with the establishment of foreign externships is to convince a first-time site to take a Cooley extern. Once the first extern is in place, the program’s value becomes clear and then sells itself. In fact, some sites such as a business law firm in Madrid, Spain regularly ask whether there are any good candidates for upcoming terms (not always easy to fill).

My primary assignment in Serbia is to help the law students at the University of Belgrade with skills-based courses and moot court opportunities such as the VIS International Arbitration Competition held in Vienna, Austria every year. While there, I hope to broaden my understanding of civil law systems based on the Austro-Hungarian codes model, on teaching and learning trends in Central Europe and in the Balkans for law students, and to delve more deeply into different legal philosophies.

I look forward to sharing insights on different legal philosophies and on different teaching methods and learning expectations with regard to the Serbian law students with whom I will have the pleasure to work over the next two semesters.

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by | July 26, 2012 · 11:30 am

Cooley’s Down-Under Program Offers Equity & Remedies Taught By the “Problem Method”

By Professor Emeritus Otto Stockmeyer

Professor Stockmeyer has taught Equity & Remedies at Cooley since 1977 and at two other law schools during academic sabbaticals.  He is excited to be teaching the course in Cooley’s 2013 Australia-New Zealand Foreign Study Program using the “problem method.”  Here he shares his thoughts on why he prefers that way of teaching.

The mantra of a Remedies course is “no wrong without a remedy.”  Some Remedies courses are organized remedy-by-remedy (“Today we will discuss punitive damages.”).  In my view, a more practice-oriented approach is to study Remedies wrong-by-wrong (“Today we will discuss remedies for fraud.”).  That way students have an opportunity to compare and contrast the remedies available for a particular wrong (tort, breach of contract, misdealing, etc.).

I have also come to prefer the problem method of instruction for Remedies.  Instead of briefing cases and reciting them in class, students master legal doctrine by studying assigned readings in a hornbook.  Then, and most importantly, they attempt to apply what they have learned by analyzing problems similar to those that a law firm associate might be asked to prepare a memo on.  Class discussion consists of a collaborative, brainstorming approach to resolving the problems.

I think that the problem method has several advantages over the traditional case-recitation and lecture methods of teaching.  First, it is practice-oriented.  Clients have problems; lawyers research the law to help resolve them.  Second, it is contemporary.  A problem-based approach suits the learning styles of today’s students.  Third, it is engaging.  Students in second- and third-year doctrinal courses can be difficult to motivate.  The problem method encourages active participation.

The problem method is part of the movement toward Problem-Based Learning (PBL).  Medical schools pioneered PBL beginning in the 1960’s.  It has since spread to other professional schools here and abroad.  A review of the literature found that “PBL develops more positive student attitudes, fosters a deeper approach to learning, and helps students retain knowledge longer than traditional instruction.”

I have asked students to comment on my use of the problem method on course evaluation forms.  The running total is 75% favorable, 25% unfavorable.  Representative positive comments include:

“The law firm format made being called on less threatening (‘user friendly’).”

“The problem method took a while to get used to, but helped in learning how to apply the material to sets of facts.”

“I like the problem method better than reading all the cases.  Things seemed more clear.”

-and-

“Anything beats reading cases.”

If you think that you would enjoy studying Equity & Remedies by the problem method, locate your passport and enroll in Cooley’s 2013 Foreign Studies Program in Australia/New Zealand.  Meanwhile, the course TWEN home page is up.  View it at http://lawschool.westlaw.com/manage/homepage.aspx?openhomepage=y&courseid=25710 (TWEN sign-on required).

For more information on Professor Stockmeyer’s approach to teaching Equity & Remedies, see his 2010 article “An Open Letter to a Colleague Preparing to Teach Remedies” in the Thomas M. Cooley Journal of Practical and Clinical Law, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1743652.  

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