Education

Why Cooley

For 40+ years, Cooley lawyers have provided comprehensive legal services and counsel to the education industry. With the largest practice devoted exclusively to the sector, Cooley lawyers and professionals combine an exceptional depth of knowledge with extensive experience in the many substantive areas that characterize contemporary education.

Our clients include every kind of postsecondary institution, as well as higher education organizations, accreditors, investors, lenders and businesses that support and finance the postsecondary community. Our multidisciplinary team provides sophisticated legal representation that enables our postsecondary education clients to seize new opportunities and successfully meet the challenges of a constantly changing business, regulatory and technological landscape.

Cooley’s education team is part of our CooleyREG offering, through which we combine an understanding of the impact of disruptive advancements – and the regulatory issues that impose risk and slow progress – to help our clients navigate an increasingly complex regulatory landscape.

This effective collaboration includes working closely with our nationally ranked cyber/data/privacy practice to navigate data protection and student privacy issues, as well as with our government analytics practice headed by a former ED deputy assistant secretary, which provides clients with federal public policy insights and regulatory strategies to help them make informed business decisions.

Areas of practice

Federal student aid funds

• Advise on the complexities of securing and keeping federal funding for student financial aid under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965

Accreditation and state licensure

• Work with state agencies that authorize postsecondary institutions, accrediting agencies that oversee their quality and state licensure boards that qualify their graduates
• Counsel on licensure and authorization of educational services delivered across state and national borders via online learning

Commercial contracts and procurement

• Prepare and negotiate complex technology-based agreements – including hardware procurement, software licenses, professional services and software development agreements, outsourcing agreements, application service provider agreements, and telecommunications capacity and service agreements

Distance learning

• Assist in the design, development and implementation of innovative approaches to distance learning
• Advise on the vulnerability of online learning to multijurisdictional regulation
• Provide sophisticated analysis of state rules for the regulation of online learning

For‐profit and nonprofit taxation

• Counsel postsecondary clients on all areas of corporate, partnership, trust and individual federal and state income taxation, gift taxation, sales and use taxation, employment taxation, taxation of nonprofit entities, and taxation of foreign entities and business activities

Human resources

• Advise clients on the design and operation of qualified, nonqualified, and incentive alternative compensation and stock-based program plans for employees, as well as retirement and healthcare programs and executive employment contracts

Intellectual property

• Represent clients on matters ranging from the protection, acquisition, licensing and use of intellectual property to counseling and negotiations on matters affecting virtually every kind of new media and alternative technology
• Advise on all aspects of copyright law – from fair-use analyses to advice on compulsory licensing schemes

Legislation

• Provide companies with policy insight to make informed business decisions
• Monitor federal public policies and procedures and analyze education-related legislation
• Identify meaningful patterns in legislative and regulatory processes that are likely to impact our clients’ business interests

Litigation and administrative appeals

• Represent postsecondary entities in a wide range of controversies in federal and state courts and before the ED – including negotiating settlement agreements and representing institutions in proceedings before administrative tribunals
• Defend against qui tam actions, which involve an especially complex and potentially very disruptive process that is increasingly being used against postsecondary institutions, particularly with regard to their use of federal student aid funds

Privacy

• Assist clients in safely navigating student data privacy issues at the federal, state and international levels

Transactions, mergers and acquisitions

• Advise clients on all aspects of strategic transactions – including public and private offerings, financings, debt and equity offerings, mergers and acquisitions
• Guide postsecondary clients through complex negotiations, multilevel financings and all other phases of major transactions
• Work with clients to design structures that are most likely to pass through the approval process and minimize regulatory limitations