Maryland Lawyer Blog

Is even bigger law firms? Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, two megafirms already, are having merger discussions to create a new $1.5 billion, 1,800-lawyer firm.

There have been a lot of big firm mergers in 2010 as big law firms struggle their way through the new economy. Whether these mergers make economic sense is unclear. I do think there is a tendency for big law firms having trouble - trouble is relative, of course, profits per partner were well over $1 million at both firms last year - to find solace in getting getting bigger although it may not make them stronger.

The Washington Post reports on an utter mess where a Virginia divorce lawyer sues his client and then winds up, after five monetary sanctions from the court for failing to appear for mandatory appearances, paying sanctions and paying the client he sued $102,000 to settle the client's counterclaim.

Why did the lawyer settle? In pretrial discovery, the lawyer produced his billing records that showed there were days he billed for 39, 31, 40, and... 71 hours. That's hard to do in a 24 hour day. The Post also made issue of the fact he billed 226 hours per month over a 16-month period. That seems more likely to be inflated given what we now know but there are some defense lawyers who are legitimately billing like that. (They don't have lives, to be sure.)

Anyway, you don't walk away from this article thinking you know the whole story. Something else had to be going on here.

Logic prevailed today as Hartford County Circuit Court Judge Emory A. Plitt, Jr. ruled that the wiretap law did not apply to a traffic stop by a plain clothes state trooper of a motorcyclist that was videotaped and posted on YouTube by the Defendant. (Background on the story here.)

"In this rapid information technology era in which we live, it is hard to imagine that either an offender or an officer would have any reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to what is said between them in a traffic stop on a public highway," Judge Plitt wrote.

The South Carolina Supreme Court anonymously admonished a lawyer who had sex with the wife of his client with whom he had three open cases.

Our law firm's general policy on these blogs is not to name names when lawyers screw up (or doctors or anyone else really for that matter). If you did something stupid, you did something stupid but we don't want to be the landing place to rub that in your face on Google. But, I can assure you, the Court of Appeals of Maryland does not share this view. So if a Maryland lawyer sleeps with a client's spouse, you can expect the court to name names and to give a steeper punishment than a mere admonishment.

Judges Jan M. Alexander, Sherrie R. Bailey, Ann Brobst, and John Nagle won easily on both Democratic and Republican ballots, assuring them of victory in November. You can find the results here (it may take a few seconds to load).

A U.S. Senate committee is set to begin an impeachment trial of a federal judge from New Orleans - really, New Orleans, shocking! - accused of pretty big time corruption, including a hard to get around kickback scheme with a law firm.

It is a case that cries out for a plea bargain but the judge seems intent on fighting it in spite of the fact that he intends to retire next year. One motivating factor besides pride: the judge would get no pension if the Senate removes him from the bench.

This might be a difficult case if it were a trial before a jury. But this is a political impeachment trial and the evidence seems clear (caveat: I'm not privy to all of the evidence obviously) that this judge at the very least engaged in conduct unbecoming of a federal judge. In an election year, that should be good enough for a conviction.

Here is the Law.com story.

One more silly Facebook lawsuit before you go to bed.

No big shock: State Senator Ulysses Currie, chairman of a legislative committee that steers $32 billion in spending for Maryland, was indicted of illegally using his influence to benefit Shoppers Food Warehouse.

A lawsuit has been filed against a video game developer by a man who became "addicted" to one of the company's video games. Plaintiff alleges that he spent 20,000 hours over five years playing the game "Lineage II" and "continues to this day to have a 'compulsive urge and need' to play the game." Plaintiff can no longer "function independently in usual daily activities" due to his addiction. Plaintiff is seeking unspecified damages.

I really want to try this game.

The Maryland Court of Appeals recently answered the following question in Ameriquest Mortgage v. Paramount Mortgage Services:

In light of Maryland’s statutory requirement that a challenge to a recorded deed of trust based on an allegedly improper affidavit of consideration and disbursement must be brought within six months of recordation, may a lienholder challenge an earlier-recorded deed of trust on the basis of an allegedly defective affidavit of consideration and disbursement, if such challenge is not filed until 18 months after recordation?

I would provide an analysis of the answer but I don't even understand the question. Of course, there are a lot of personal injury related questions the court addresses that Maryland property lawyers could not begin to understand. The amazing thing to me is the appellate courts have to be able to get their minds fully around both areas of law and many, many more. Judges are basically general practice lawyers. There are not too many general practice lawyers out there anymore because there is just too much to know. Which underscores how hard it is to be a judge.