Western Michigan University Cooley Law School Blog

  Sometimes you know exactly what you want to do as a career growing up, but most of the time you need to try things on for size. For WMU-Cooley student Helen Khouli, law school wasn't the first shoe she tried on. 

WMU-Cooley student Lanita Carter and her two sisters grew up in the Detroit area under the strong influence of her mother, their role model and inspiration.  As a young girl of a single mom, Carter remembers always wanting to help the family. She wanted to make sure she was doing her part. So much so that she started working in the ninth grade. 

When Rosston Lloyd Ramsey was born, his parents chose his name because they thought it sounded “judicial” and befitting of their hopes that he would someday be a judge. Today, as Ramsey prepares to graduate from WMU-Cooley Law School’s Auburn Hills campus, he is getting closer to fulfilling his parents’ desires.

A big part of the WMU-Cooley Law School experience is community service and it often provides life-long lessons for students and for those they assist. But every March in Tampa, the table is turned and it’s the students who get the assistance from the community. Again, the results can last a lifetime.

Blog contributor Otto Stockmeyer is a WMU-Cooley Law School Distinguished Professor Emeritus. This is one of a series taking a fresh look at famous cases. 

What’s more important to a successful legal education and career than brains, drive or love for the law? If you ask Carly Wolf, Deputy Director of Academic Support at WMU-Cooley’s Tampa Bay campus, it’s planning, pure and simple.

WMU-Cooley, as a Military friendly and designated Yellow Ribbon School, talks to its military students, faculty and graduates about their journey from the military to law school and about their career goals. This blog features WMU-Cooley law student Mariko C. Willis. Mariko has recently been selected to be a Marine Corps Staff Sergeant.

WMU-Cooley Law School knows a lot about innovation and action. Those qualities have been instilled in the law school since its  inception in 1972. It continues today. New teaching reforms have been spurred by the law school’s three-year project with Western Michigan University’s Instructional Design Research Lab, which is directed by WMU's behavior-management expert and pyschologist Dr. Douglas Johnson.

Students participating in WMU-Cooley's Study Abroad program in Australia and New Zealand are learning a lot Down Under. Right now they are learning about their parliamentary institutions of democracy. We sometimes take for granted the democratic balance of power and the branches of government in the United States. Yet robust democracies around the world have made different choices in their governance. 

WMU-Cooley graduate Gadiel Espinoza can't say life has been easy, but will tell you, unequivocally, that there is no obstacle or barrier that can stand in his way of finding success.