Western Michigan University Cooley Law School Blog

Tampa Mayor Jane Castor may have named WMU-Cooley student Brittany Lindsay a COVID-19 Hero of Tampa Bay, but her hero status started well before 2020. In March of 2020, Lindsay was a Senior Program Director at the local YMCA supervising the Office of Youth Development. She was responsible for essential workers’ children. When daycare shut down, it was her immediate responsibility to make all daycare options safe for the children of essential workers, like police, firefighters, and those in the military. In essence, Lindsay became an essential worker tasked to help pave the way for essential workers and their families.

Yes, that statement exaggerates—but only slightly. Academics must publish or perish, meaning to lose their chance at a tenured position. Lawyers, on the other hand, don’t lose their law license when they fail to publish. Yet they lose a critical professional-development opportunity.

Starting a new law school from scratch is not a simple matter. WMU-Cooley Law School’s founder, Justice Thomas E. Brennan, had many concerns, large and small, to attend to, from hiring faculty to acquiring furniture. He devised the school’s innovative year-round schedule, created the Student Bar Association and Scholastic Review Board, composed the school’s motto, and designed its distinctive diplomas.  Another of Brennan’s concerns was that his students—also new, of course—achieve success at the new school. To that end he typed up a one-page list of suggestions he titled “Judge Brennan’s Ten Commandments for Law School.” For several years, Xerox copies were included in new-student welcome packets. In later years, some first-year professors attached copies to their course syllabus. But as far as is known, the “Ten Commandments” were never typeset or digitalized. . . until now. Here, preserved on the internet, is the handout that helped the first generations of WMU-Cooley law students achieve success.

Blog author WMU-Cooley Distinguished Professor Emeritus Otto Stockmeyer devoted 35 years to teaching first-year law courses. In an update of a 2017 blog post he offers his thoughts on the important role of the first year in training successful lawyers.

Here at WMU-Cooley fall classes are beginning. New students will quickly learn that first-term courses do not include Vocabulary 101. Rather, students are expected to master the law’s terminology on their own, by looking up every word in their assigned cases that they don’t understand.

Dalton Dennis remembers early on that his father never made things easy. Whatever they did, his father wouldn't give him an answer. He wanted him to come up with that himself. It was frustrating, even infuriating for Dennis as a young boy and teenager. What he realized later was that was the best thing his father ever taught him - how to think on his feet and to answer his own questions. It's those exact lessons and skills that have put him at an advantage in life, including success in law school. 

Nina Yakubov is one of those people who always had a good idea what she wanted to do, even at an early age. Growing up in Russia, being around very educated people, Yakubov was especially amazed by how lawyers could think in a way nobody else could. She thought of attorneys as "Super Heroes." 

Life for Shari Wilson started off like it did for many kids – hanging out with the family, going to school, playing with friends. For just about nine years, the Wilson family led the quintessential American life. Mom taught at a nearby school. Shari rode her bike and played outside until the streetlights came on.

Joeie Skelly knew that she wanted to be a lawyer since she was 8 years old. “While other kids were playing house,” she recalled, “I pretended to play lawyer.”

WMU-Cooley Law School 3L student, Jalitza Serrano, is living proof that you can not only conquer your fears, but transform them into something positive to help others.