By Sheila Pursglove
Legal News
When Toren Chenault stepped inside a courtroom at the age of 10, he was terrified.
“Not because anything was happening to me or anything, I just hated how much I didn’t understand about court and the law,” he says. “As I got older, I wanted to understand what the law actually was and what it wasn’t.”
Chenault went on to earn his undergrad degree in political science/government and pre-law from Michigan State University in 2018.
“Political science was a good way to understand the way the world works, but also a way to understand history—whether through election data, the criminal justice system, or ancient philosophy, there’s always a cool combination of history and knowledge,” he says.
Although he had expressed an interest in law school, Chenault did not take the final step until the nationwide protests after George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020 spurred him into applying.
“I wanted to help my community any way I could,” he says. “I’d said before that I wanted to go to law school but I never committed. Those protests made me stop being scared and learn what the law was really about.”
He started at Cooley Law School in August 2023, attracted by the opportunities the school offered—and where he was awarded the 2025 Ralph M. Freeman Law School Scholarship by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan; the Black Public Defenders Association 2025 Fellowship; received a Merit Scholarship; earned a Blue Book award in Pre-Trial Skills Criminal and Advanced Legal Research; made the Dean’s List and Honor Roll every semester; and held a GPA of 3.71, and a Class Rank of 4 out of 70.
“I got to experience law school in a really robust way—anything I could do, I tried to do in law school, and I was able to do so because Cooley has a lot of different opportunities to get involved,” he says.
Chenault thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the Cooley community, where he served as treasurer of the Black Law Students Association, a Student Bar Association mentor, a Teaching Assistant, an Innocence Project intern, a member of the Jessup International Moot Court Team, and interned at the State Appellate Defender Office.
A major highlight was serving as Editor-in-Chief of Law Review, where he relished the collaboration.
“I honestly had no clue what a law review was before law school. But I soon learned how prestigious law reviews are and I enjoyed adding to Cooley’s,” he says. “One of the coolest moments as EIC was once I gave a presentation to some soon-to-be 1L’s for orientation. One of them came up to me and said he thought it was really cool I was EIC and that he had read some of Cooley’s great work in the past. Will never forget that.”
At his Cooley Law School orientation, he had been particularly impressed by the Dean’s Fellows, and was later thrilled to join them.
“They helped us a ton when it came to navigating law school and understanding the bigger picture of legal topics. I wanted to be a part of that,” he says. “And it’s probably the thing I enjoyed the most. I got to help a lot of students and think I got to make a positive impact on them, just like the previous Dean’s Fellows did for me.”
Chenault received the Leadership Achievement Award at the Spring Honors Convocation, ahead of his May graduation.
“I couldn’t believe it, to be honest,” he says. “When Dean Krause-Phelan was explaining what the Leadership Achievement Award was about I was thinking to myself, ‘Well that sounds pretty cool, I wonder who won that?’ I was honored to receive it because I think it showed how dedicated I was to the community in my time at Cooley. I wanted to give my all to being a Dean’s Fellow, mentor, and Teaching Assistant and this award shows I did just that. Out of everything I did at Cooley, nothing beat helping someone understand issue preclusion or the 5th Amendment. I’ll cherish those times helping other students forever.”
Chenault has accepted a position with the Ingham County Public Defender's Office. Future goals include opening his own law firm one day, and having the opportunity to argue in front of the Supreme Court.
When he’s not writing and researching legal papers, Chenault is a writer and editor of other works. He wrote and self-published his first novel, “Mystic Man,” in 2018, while in undergrad, and has been writing ever since, mainly comics/graphic novels. He runs his own publishing company— Black Hole Comics and Entertainment (bhcent.com)—that he started with a friend in 2020.
“I obviously also love reading comics but I love to read novels as well, mainly science fiction,” he says.
Legal News
When Toren Chenault stepped inside a courtroom at the age of 10, he was terrified.
“Not because anything was happening to me or anything, I just hated how much I didn’t understand about court and the law,” he says. “As I got older, I wanted to understand what the law actually was and what it wasn’t.”
Chenault went on to earn his undergrad degree in political science/government and pre-law from Michigan State University in 2018.
“Political science was a good way to understand the way the world works, but also a way to understand history—whether through election data, the criminal justice system, or ancient philosophy, there’s always a cool combination of history and knowledge,” he says.
Although he had expressed an interest in law school, Chenault did not take the final step until the nationwide protests after George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020 spurred him into applying.
“I wanted to help my community any way I could,” he says. “I’d said before that I wanted to go to law school but I never committed. Those protests made me stop being scared and learn what the law was really about.”
He started at Cooley Law School in August 2023, attracted by the opportunities the school offered—and where he was awarded the 2025 Ralph M. Freeman Law School Scholarship by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan; the Black Public Defenders Association 2025 Fellowship; received a Merit Scholarship; earned a Blue Book award in Pre-Trial Skills Criminal and Advanced Legal Research; made the Dean’s List and Honor Roll every semester; and held a GPA of 3.71, and a Class Rank of 4 out of 70.
“I got to experience law school in a really robust way—anything I could do, I tried to do in law school, and I was able to do so because Cooley has a lot of different opportunities to get involved,” he says.
Chenault thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the Cooley community, where he served as treasurer of the Black Law Students Association, a Student Bar Association mentor, a Teaching Assistant, an Innocence Project intern, a member of the Jessup International Moot Court Team, and interned at the State Appellate Defender Office.
A major highlight was serving as Editor-in-Chief of Law Review, where he relished the collaboration.
“I honestly had no clue what a law review was before law school. But I soon learned how prestigious law reviews are and I enjoyed adding to Cooley’s,” he says. “One of the coolest moments as EIC was once I gave a presentation to some soon-to-be 1L’s for orientation. One of them came up to me and said he thought it was really cool I was EIC and that he had read some of Cooley’s great work in the past. Will never forget that.”
At his Cooley Law School orientation, he had been particularly impressed by the Dean’s Fellows, and was later thrilled to join them.
“They helped us a ton when it came to navigating law school and understanding the bigger picture of legal topics. I wanted to be a part of that,” he says. “And it’s probably the thing I enjoyed the most. I got to help a lot of students and think I got to make a positive impact on them, just like the previous Dean’s Fellows did for me.”
Chenault received the Leadership Achievement Award at the Spring Honors Convocation, ahead of his May graduation.
“I couldn’t believe it, to be honest,” he says. “When Dean Krause-Phelan was explaining what the Leadership Achievement Award was about I was thinking to myself, ‘Well that sounds pretty cool, I wonder who won that?’ I was honored to receive it because I think it showed how dedicated I was to the community in my time at Cooley. I wanted to give my all to being a Dean’s Fellow, mentor, and Teaching Assistant and this award shows I did just that. Out of everything I did at Cooley, nothing beat helping someone understand issue preclusion or the 5th Amendment. I’ll cherish those times helping other students forever.”
Chenault has accepted a position with the Ingham County Public Defender's Office. Future goals include opening his own law firm one day, and having the opportunity to argue in front of the Supreme Court.
When he’s not writing and researching legal papers, Chenault is a writer and editor of other works. He wrote and self-published his first novel, “Mystic Man,” in 2018, while in undergrad, and has been writing ever since, mainly comics/graphic novels. He runs his own publishing company— Black Hole Comics and Entertainment (bhcent.com)—that he started with a friend in 2020.
“I obviously also love reading comics but I love to read novels as well, mainly science fiction,” he says.
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