What happens when too many students at a law school can’t clear the bar exam? It quickly gets on the radar of the American Bar Association. One school in Michigan, Cooley Law, spent years skating below the minimum pass rate — until a last‑minute bump in 2024 outcomes pulled it back from the edge and forced a hard look at what “accredited” should really mean.
Cooley Lands in ABA Trouble
Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s trouble with the American Bar Association picked up in 2020, when the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar found the school out of compliance with Standard 316.
Why? It all has to do with what’s called the “ultimate bar passage rate.” This rate measures the share of a year’s graduates who pass a bar exam within two years of completing law school, even if they require more than one attempt. Under ABA Standard 316, this rate is the key accreditation test: at least 75% of graduates who take the bar exam must pass within two years. The point is to look beyond first‑time scores and see how many graduates eventually pass.
When you compare ultimate bar passage rates for American law schools, Cooley has long stood out as an outlier. The law school had ultimate passage rates in the high‑50s and low‑60s percent range for graduating classes such as 2017 and 2019, even as peer institutions steadily improved.
In 2010, Cooley had a whopping 3,931 students, but that steadily declined. Cooley was once associated with Western Michigan University, but in 2020, the university decided to end its affiliation with the law school, saying it “has become a distraction from the university’s core mission.”
By 2022 Cooley’s enrollment had dropped to less than 700. That year, Cooley appeared before the ABA’s Council. The Council concluded that the law school still was not in compliance with Standard 316 and moved from an initial finding of noncompliance into a structured corrective‑action regime.
ABA’s Three-Year Ultimatum
The Council gave Cooley up to three more years to come into compliance, as long as the school followed what the ABA called a “Reliable Plan” for improvement. The plan focused on admitting stronger classes, improving teaching and academic support, expanding bar prep help, and putting real money behind those changes.
Despite those measures, Cooley’s bar passage rates remained below the benchmark through 2024, and the case escalated in 2025. According to ABA Disclosure Reports, in 2025, Cooley had the lowest passage rate for the two-year bar benchmark, 57.47%. For first-time bar takers, Cooley had the second-lowest passage rate, 51.54%, higher than only the Inter American University of Puerto Rico.
If you’re thinking that maybe a 75% cutoff is harsh, it’s really not. Individual‑school spreadsheets on the ABA Required Disclosures site show that only a small cluster of institutions in any given year fall below the 75% two‑year rate. In 2025, only 3.09% fell below a 75% passage rate.
About 53.09% of the numbers had a 90% or above passage rate, and 25.77% had 95% or above. Some schools, like the University of Virginia, even had 100% bar passage rates for the 2-year benchmark. Wisconsin schools had nearly perfect pass rates for first-time takers–UW with 99.61% and Marquette with a 99.51% passage rate for first-timers.
Too Cooley for School
By 2025, Cooley’s rates were still under the standard, and the matter escalated. The ABA convened a hearing this past August to decide whether to impose sanctions for ongoing noncompliance. The Council concluded that Cooley’s continued shortfall was “sufficiently serious” that it raised concerns about the quality of the student learning experience.
The Council placed Cooley on probation, effective Sept. 19, 2025. It also ordered the school to notify current and prospective students, post the decision on its website, and have the president and dean return in February 2026 to explain why Cooley should keep its accreditation and how it plans to fix its bar‑pass results.
The president and dean were ordered to appear before the Council at its February 2026 meeting to show cause why accreditation should not be withdrawn and to demonstrate how the school would provide a quality legal education while coming into compliance with Standard 316. During this probationary period, however, Cooley remained accredited. Students continued to be eligible for federal financial aid and graduates remained eligible to sit for bar exams.
An (Underwhelming) Comeback
Even as probation was imposed, Cooley’s administration emphasized that the Reliable Plan was working and pointed to improving bar outcomes, particularly for the Class of 2024. Public statements from President and Dean James McGrath noted that more than three‑quarters of 2024 graduates who had taken a bar exam had already passed and argued that once nationwide July 2025 bar exam results were in, the school would be able to “definitively prove compliance” with Standard 316.
The ABA’s probation notice, however, made clear that the Council did not yet view the school as compliant because results for some 2024 graduates were still outstanding, and it grounded the formal finding of noncompliance in the ultimate bar passage performance of the Class of 2022. The school publicly disputed that narrow snapshot, stressing that the standards allow later graduating classes to bring a school back into compliance when their two‑year outcomes exceed 75%, and it predicted that the accumulating 2024 data would do exactly that.
Those predictions were ultimately borne out. After the nationwide July 2025 results were incorporated, Cooley’s ultimate bar passage outcomes for its 2024 graduates rose to 76.2%, meaning that 76.2% of graduates who had taken a bar exam within two years of graduation had passed — just over the 75% floor required by Standard 316.
A Cooleying-off Period?
Last month, after a two-month probation, the ABA council reviewed Cooley’s updated bar‑exam results and decided the school now met Standard 316. In a notice issued on November 21, the ABA said Cooley was back in compliance and lifted the probation, confirming that the school remains approved. Through it all, Cooley kept teaching students in Lansing and Tampa Bay while they stayed eligible for financial aid and the bar.
Now, for the first time in five years, Cooley meets the ABA’s minimum standards for bar passage rates. But its administration shouldn’t start celebrating just yet. The law school has just cleared the minimum bar, not aced the exam. For Cooley students, hopefully the upward trend continues.
Related Resources:
- California Offers Bar Exam Retakes for Free After Troublesome Rollout of New System (FindLaw's Practice of Law)
- Bar Exam Pass Rates Rise Nationwide (FindLaw's Practice of Law)
- What to Do If You Don't Pass the Bar Exam (FindLaw's Practice of Law)
