Professionalism Programs
Cooley Student Mediation Board
Cooley students trained in mediation under the Michigan Court Rules volunteer their time to help confidentially resolve personal conflicts between students and practice their mediation skills.
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Cultural Competence Workshops
A series of five workshops supporting professional development in cross-cultural competencies are offered to Cooley students to expose them to, and teach them to advise and counsel, a diverse clientele in a sensitive, supportive, and effective manner. The Center's workshops feature speakers, interactive instruction, and student-facilitated workgroups covering five core competencies: (1) communication; (2) cognition; (3) reference; (4) resource; and (5) relationship. Students learn to recognize their own professionally influenced and their clients' culturally influenced habits, viewpoints, capacities, and practices so as to be able to adjust and adapt and thereby provide more professional counsel. The workshops have been incorporated into the Pathway course.
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Professional Development and Mentoring
Mentoring Programs
Cooley employs the concept of episodic mentoring for professional development through its Professionalism Portfolio Project. Rather than match individual student protégés with one lawyer for an extended period of time, Cooley encourages students to be mentored by many different lawyers and for short periods of time. This concept of episodic mentoring—based on the notion that protégés can learn a great deal from mentors in as little as 20 minutes, if both parties are focused on mentoring and understand the goal—offers students the advantages of
- knowing many lawyers,
- learning the skill of self-mentoring—that is, learning to ask questions that will assist in one’s professional development,
- getting many viewpoints about issues,
- avoiding an unproductive or incompatible pairing
- sharpening communication skills
- learning to approach people, without an introduction, in a way that is welcomed
- attending social and professional events where lawyers are present.
Cooley students are taught the concept of "self-mentoring," that is, asking questions to elicit information that will help them develop professionally. They learn to ask lawyers, and then reflect on what they hear, about how lawyers make good decisions, handle ethical challenges, balance their personal and work lives, make time for public service and pro bono work, develop professionally, deal with difficult people, model good behavior, and meet the ethical obligations of the legal profession. Students are encouraged to start episodic mentoring in their second term and to continue it every term, with a goal of doubling, each term, the number of attorneys they contact. If they follow through on this challenge, they will know 16 attorneys by their 6th term, who may be able to help them with externships and possible employment leads in their third year.
We also offer traditional matched mentoring through various programs.
At the Ann Arbor campus:
- Detroit Metropolitan Bar Association Pro Bono Mentoring Program – students are paired with a DMBA Bar member who is handling a pro bono case. The protégés assist with the pro bono work and are mentored along the way. Contact Dean Martha Moore.
- Students can be paired with mentors through the Detroit Metropolitan Bar Association. Contact Dean Martha Moore.
- Minority students can be paired with mentors through the D. Augustus Straker Bar Association and through “Edge for Excellence.” Contact Professor John Taylor or Dean Martha Moore.
- Cooley students mentor incoming students through the Cooley Ann Arbor Mentoring Program. Contact Campus Director Julie Mullens.
At the Auburn Hills campus:
- 60-Minute Mentoring with members of the Macomb County Bar Association in their offices. Contact Career and Professional Development Coordinator Shari Lesnick.
- Detroit Metropolitan Bar Association Pro Bono Mentoring Program – students are paired with a DMBA Bar member who is handling a pro bono case. The protégés assist with the pro bono work and are mentored along the way.& Contact Dionnie Wynter.
- Minority students can be paired with mentors through the D. Augustus Straker Bar Association. Contact Dean John Nussbaumer.
At the Grand Rapids campus:
- SMART (Structured Mentoring as Assessment of Relevant Training) Program matches lawyers who can articulate what it means to be a competent lawyer with students who are interested in learning how to focus their study efforts to become better lawyers. One to five students meet in the attorney's office for one hour and then write a reflective paper on what they learned, which is shared with the attorney. Contact Assistant Director of the Center for Ethics Karen Rowlader.
- A "Reverse Mentoring" program held on Law Day purports to be the student mentoring the lawyer (student mentors know iPhone apps, business analytics, extreme fundraising, grant writing, and other things that senior lawyers might want to know for their firms and practices) and also involves the lawyer mentoring the student.
At the Lansing campus:
- the Professionalism Portfolio (see portal home page) and the Pathway to Success course both require students to experience “mentoring episodes,” and students are provided with resources for finding those opportunities with lawyers.
- 60 Minute Mentoring with members of the Ingham County Bar Association and Cooley students occurs in the attorneys' offices. Contact Center for Ethics Administrative Assistant Kathy Lawrence.
- The Cooley Chapter of the American Inns of Court meets monthly and combines 20-minute mentoring and reverse mentoring before dinner so that the seasoned lawyers can mentor law students and also be mentored by the law students.
Cooley is one of ten founding members of a newly established National Legal Mentoring Consortium. Contact Dean Amy Timmer.
Professional Development Programs
Other professional development programs include the self-directed Professionalism Portfolio Project and the two-credit elective course called Pathway to Success: Your Career and Portfolio. Both the self-directed program and the course require self-reflection and training in personal responsibility, ethics, and service, document the student's professional identity development and personal code of conduct, require episodic mentoring, and offer employers insight into an applicant’s knowledge, skills, ethics, and character. Please see these individually listed programs for further information.
The Center for Ethics, Service, and Professionalism promotes professional development not just of its students, but also its faculty and staff. Professional development activities sponsored through the Center include development of a faculty professionalism portfolio, conferences with area faculty, mentoring opportunities for Cooley faculty, a study of a mentoring program run in conjunction with the State Bar of Michigan that matches Cooley students intending to practice in Michigan with Michigan lawyers, and a professionalism orientation for new students at each campus during which area lawyers and judges meet in small groups with the newest Cooley students to talk about ethics and professionalism.
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Professionalism Portfolio and Pathway to Success Course
Every student at Cooley is offered the opportunity to create, throughout enrollment, a Professionalism Portfolio that requires self-reflection and training in personal responsibility, ethics, and service, documents the student's professional identity development and personal code of conduct, encourages episodic mentoring with lawyers, connects students to the resource offices at Cooley at the right time during their enrollment, and ultimately offers employers insight into an applicants knowledge, skills, ethics, and character. Participating students benefit through better connections, both to the school and to attorneys, and improved and focused career planning while in law school. The program is housed on Cooley's portal where the term-appropriate exercises and recorded presentations are available. Students are also invited to group meetings each term. Students who complete the program create a professionalism portfolio that can be shared with employers to document their character, mastery of lawyer skills, service to the community, awards and excellence in law school, and ability to begin a legal job upon graduation. Students' portfolios may be web-based, or contained on a flash drive, DVD, or in hard copy.
In 2008, Deans Timmer and Zelenski brought a course-component to the portfolio, to draw those students who prefer having a classroom structure. Joined by Cooley's Distinguished Jurist U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Suhrheinrich, they developed and now teach at the Lansing campus a two-credit elective course called Pathway to Success: Your Career and Portfolio. Students complete all portfolio exercises, plus additional work meant to focus them on understanding themselves and their career options. The course runs over five terms so that the Deans can develop and maintain close relationships with the students. The course is also offered at Cooley's Grand Rapids and Auburn Hills campuses.
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Public School Mentoring and Assistance Programs
The Center for Ethics, Service, and Professionalism encourages programming with local public schools, to improve the education of all and to interest students in continuing their education and even considering law school. In their work with public schools, Cooley Law School students provide help as mentors, teachers, and tutors, and offer their support and encouragement through personal relationships and fund-raising.
In Saginaw area schools, Cooley's Auburn Hills faculty member Professor Monica Nuckolls and her father, Hon. M.T. Thompson, Jr., developed and implement a drug education and crime prevention program called Making Choices and Facing Consequences, an evidence-and field-tested drug education and crime prevention program designed to:
- Promote the development of personal self-management skills through decision making exercises that allow children and young adults to examine real life situations and consider the choices and consequences presented by each situation;
- Teach children and young adults what constitutes unlawful and risky behavior and how to avoid dangerous and unsafe situations; and
- Promote responsible citizenship and appropriate behavior standards.
Drug education and character training is delivered through a set of real life stories about children and young adults. The characters in the stories come from the same type of neighborhoods, share similar backgrounds, and face the same type of problems, pressures, and temptations as the young adults we are trying to reach. The lesson is clear: good choices have good consequences and bad choices have bad consequences.
The Making Choices and Facing Consequences curriculum has been endorsed by Superintendents from the Saginaw, Bridgeport, and Carrollton Public School Districts, and the Saginaw Police Chiefs’ Association. It has also been successfully used in the Saginaw Public Schools’ 21st Century Program, Bridgeport-Spaulding Schools, Carrollton Public Schools, Buena Vista Public Schools, Saginaw County Juvenile Detention Center, and the Saginaw Community Foundation’s Youth First Program.
At Pontiac High School, Cooley's Center for Ethics offers Project Future to high school students to address bullying and alcohol and drug abuse. This program is an outgrowth of the Making Choices and Facing Consequences program described above and is designed to: promote the development of personal self-management skills through decision making exercises that allow young adults to examine real life situations and consider the choices and consequences presented by each situation; teach young adults what constitutes unlawful and risky behavior and how to avoid dangerous and unsafe situations; and promote responsible citizenship and appropriate behavior standards.
In an effort to reduce school violence in the Lansing public schools, the Center offers the Peer Mediation Program through which Cooley students teach mediation and conflict resolution, and act as mentors, to public school students, when the public schools have sufficient resources to support this program. The Center expanded this program to St. Andrews Academy in Grand Rapids and the 7th Day Adventist Church School in Lansing.
Since 1994, Professor Nancy Wonch has trained thousands of students in area elementary, middle, and high schools to be peer mediators, and has trained Cooley students in facilitative mediation skills. Facilitative mediation is the foundation for the advanced mediation class at Cooley and also is the required method for certification in Michigan for mediators who wish to be included in the list of court approved mediators. Many of the Cooley students have gone on to take the advanced mediation class and to become mediators as lawyers. Professor Wonch has also provided many more with the basic principals of facilitative mediation with special presentations to students at the Michigan Supreme Court, Youth in Government, Cub Scouts, Michigan State University, and visits to other schools like Pontiac Middle School. Additionally she has trained high school students in the principles of interest based negotiation as a kind of "advanced" conflict resolution skill when they are in their second year of our program.
Cooley students benefit in several ways from this program: They learn the fundamentals of facilitative mediation and interest based negotiation; they mentor and lead school students in our community; they are, in turn, mentored by Professor Wonch and her training partner Anne Smiley. Frequently they develop or enhance existing interests in ADR that carry through to their legal careers. The development of healthy, non-violent, peaceful problem solving and dispute resolution methods in all of the students we teach is the primary objective of the Peer Mediation project. In 2006, this project received the Nanci S. Klein award from the State Bar of Michigan Alternative Dispute Resolution Section "in recognition of its significant contributions to the field of community-based dispute resolution."
The Grand Rapids campus connected with East Kentwood High School (EKHS) when Cooley students helped them prepare for a regional "We The People" competition where high school students are tested on their knowledge of the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. East Kentwood High School also offers the peer jurors for Grand Rapids Teen Court. Students from EKHS joined Cooley students and paralegal students from Davenport University at the Grand Rapids campus to view the Michigan Supreme Court oral argument simulcast from the Auburn Hills campus. The Grand Rapids Center for Ethics invited and hosted ROTC cadets from Western Michigan University, Grand Valley State University, Calvin College and Cornerstone University, along with their Captain, for breakfast and a tour of the campus. Following the tour, they accompanied faculty, staff, and students to Stand Down 2009. The Cadets acted as guides and accompanied the veterans to each of the service providers at Stand Down. Students, faculty, and staff at the Grand Rapids campus collected school supplies for Heart of West Michigan United Way's Schools of Hope program. Students volunteered to help "Stuff the School Bus" with items go to Grand Rapids public school students who can't afford needed items to start school.
The Ann Arbor campus students, led by Deans Vestrand and Moore, assist Ypsilanti High School students through:
- Homework Help, which is academic tutoring and friendship offered by Cooley students and faculty along with Eastern Michigan University;
- Support and mentorship of 27 homeless students through the Purposeful Acts of Kindness (PAK) organization
- Student Court, through which the court and high school juries administer consequences for admitted school conduct code violations. Cooley students train the jurors, serve as judges in the proceedings, and mentor the student’s satisfactory completion of all requirements of disposition. Because of the restorative justice principles involved, the Washtenaw County Family Court is monitoring the success of the court with an eye towards its possible implementation district wide
- Making Meals Happen: The Ann Arbor campus teamed up with students at the University of Michigan Law School to provide 170 needy families in the district with a Thanksgiving dinner. Many of these dinners went to families with students at Ypsilanti High School
- United Parents, a support group of parents, students, community liaisons, the assistant superintendent of the district and representatives from Cooley and Eastern Michigan University to link resources for parental empowerment and unity
- Circle of Hope partnerships in the community to support initiatives at Ypsilanti High School.
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Student Wellness
Wellness programming in law schools is becoming increasingly important because of the stress experienced by law students in many facets of their lives. A law school's approach to wellness programming should be holistic and address wellness in all aspects, including social, financial, physical, emotional, career, and spiritual wellness. Assistant Dean Cynthia Ward has taken responsibility for student wellness programs and is assessing wellness programming currently offered at the law school by student organizations and other departments. By bringing together the programming under one wellness umbrella, we hope to underscore the importance of wellness in the profession. Several wellness programs have been conducted covering financial responsibility, meditation, appropriate social networking, and alcohol problems for law students.
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