The American Bar Association has placed Thomas M. Cooley Law School on probation because of its continued failure to meet the required minimum bar exam passage rate.

The ABA’s Standard 316 requires at least 75% of a school’s graduates who sit for the bar to pass within two years of graduation. Cooley, which has campuses in Lansing and Tampa, Florida, has been out of compliance since the rule was implemented in 2020.

That failure “is sufficiently serious that it raises concerns about the quality of the student learning experience,” the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar wrote in a notice issued last week .

Cooley’s President James McGrath will now have to appear in front of the Council in February to make a case for why it should keep its ABA accr

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