Maryland Lawyer Blog

This is a great article that sets out the changes in the Federal Rules on computing time. The new rules make more sense. You just have to know what they are.

What do you make of the much circulated rumor that President Obama will nominate Alan Dershowitz to the Supreme Court this week? Of course, I'm completely making this up. The Internet is great. If you say something crazy enough, someone will pick it up and it will become the next hot rumor. Could modern society function without Snopes?

This leads me to another "we would not have conceived of this even 5 years ago" tidbit: there is a fantasy Supreme Court website where you can go and make your fantasy pick for Supreme Court justice. On his site, Josh Blackmon has photoshopped Elena Kagan into a picture with the other Supreme Court justices.

In other Supreme Court news, the court has closed the main entrance to the Supreme Court for security reasons. Two justices dissented from the decision. That sounds like another joke. But it is not. There really was a dissenting opinion.

One more big Supreme Court issue out there is televising Supreme Court oral arguments. Is there any chance Supreme Court arguments won't be televised in 2030? Obviously, keeping cameras out is the wrong side of history. We now know what Tiger Woods is eating for breakfast. Americans now demand more information. We want to see how the sausage is being made, particularly when it is our sausage. So without a compelling reason for keeping cameras out, I think it is time to make the people's court the people's court.

Great story in the Maryland Daily Record on a lawyer at Thomas & Libowitz P.A. in Baltimore, who is pursuing a master’s degree in theology while maintaining his law practice, hoping to serve as a pastoral life director or pastoral associate after he retires from practicing law.

Newsflash: the legal job market is a jungle. According to the National Association of Law Placement, 2010 summer associate positions are at at least 17 year low (the NALP has only been collecting data for 17 years).

It is tough job market for new lawyers. But law students and young lawyers should keep in mind that the legal market has had peeks and valleys as long as anyone can remember. The market is going to change again and people scrambling for jobs are going to have their pick of good jobs. It is just hard to imagine right now if you have never seen the highs and lows.

Above the Law has a post (with a picture) of an advertisement in a Minnesota airport where a law firm markets itself mimicking a nutritional ingredients label.

This law firm has apparently coined a new term to describe itself: an "expertique." Above the Law says this increases their "Obnoxious Lawyer Schtick" content from 0% to 15%.

I hate to attack anyone for going outside of the box in legal marketing. Outside the box can be a great thing. Every innovator when outside of the box. But it is important to keep in mind: they made the box for a reason. When you jump out of it, do so with great care.

Hysterically, the Princeton Review has ranked how much out of class time law students at different schools spend studying. The hardest school to get into in the country might be Yale. Its students ranked last. Apparently, lazy pills are given at orientation.

Top ranked? Villanova. As Above the Law points out, its students cannot possibly average 7.5 hours of studying a day unless they are (a) skipping class or (b) really dumb.

These rankings are so useless I think even printing them is going to mislead the impressionable.

The Maryland Daily Record reports that the state courts’ Rules Committee has rejected a proposed ban on cell phones in Maryland courthouses. I wrote about this proposed rule last week.

Good call. Not having cell phones at trial would have been a logistical disaster for trial lawyers.

This is the proposed rule that got shot down.

• Cell phone usage in Maryland courtrooms (current list of Maryland courts where you can bring your cell phone into court)


• United States District Court for Southern District of California (cell phone rules)


• Mistrial for juror tweets


• Follow the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog on Twitter

The Maryland Association of Justice is conducting a case evaluation clinic on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at the Maryland Trial Lawyers Association in Columbia. Maryland lawyers with personal injury cases may bring their case to a panel of seasoned Maryland personal injury lawyers for a case evaluation.

As you might expect, there are relatively inexperienced lawyers at the clinic looking for insight on their cases. But here is what you might not intuitively expect: often the most experienced lawyer at the table when a case is being evaluated is the lawyer who is getting the evaluation. Why? Because many of the top personal injury lawyers in Maryland are smart enough to know that you can get a great deal of benefit from discussing your case with other seasoned personal injury lawyers (at a fraction of what such a service should really cost).

You can get more information on the case evaluation clinic here.

As long as the Internet has now been with us - a lifetime for all practical purposes for my law students today - everyone was caught flatfooted by the social media boom. (We were all foolish not to think of it sooner - we would be rich.) Like other jurisdictions, Maryland courts are looking at controlling the ramifications of Internet usage and social media interactions of jurors.

This is a draft of a new proposed Maryland Rule that will be on the agenda at the next Rules Committee meeting on October 2, 2009 in Annapolis.

• Cell phone usage in Maryland courtrooms (current list of where you can bring your cell phone into court in Maryland)
• United States District Court for Southern District of California (cell phone rules)
• Mistrial for juror tweets
• Follow the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog on Twitter

Am Law Litigation Daily has announced a winner to the "love anthem to your firm" competition. The winner was an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meager & Flom who wrote the unforgettable diddy "Skadden, You Gladden My Heart." Moments after winning the award, Skadden fired the associate because she "should be able to find something else to do" with her time.

Okay, not really. But that would have been a good big firm story that would be believed if you told it straight faced in a bar filled with big firm lawyers.

Should you get disbarred for starving a horse to death and having no remorse for it? I vote yes.

In a related topic, the ABA Animal Law Section is putting out a very nice publication.

I think this guy is completely insane. I think you want associates that are completely dedicated to your firm. I just don't think the best associates are Patty Hearst brainwashed. But the article is full of great advice you could not think up on your own. "Associates should always strive to provide the partner with perfect work." Cutting edge stuff.

This blogger agrees with me. Yet I really don't agree with his post, either.

There's less risk involved in not sticking to the conventional MO at the firm. After all, it's unlikely you will last long there. It's even more unlikely you will become partner. What is likely if you are a shrewd player is that you will learn about practicing law and career strategy/tactics to make it just about anywhere in law. That could range from a solo practice to a top government position.

There has to be a middle ground between working 16 hours a week and assuming your big law job will fail so you should start angling for a "solo practice or a top government position." I'm certain I'm right about this.

The Maryland Intellectual Property Law Blog reports that Marylanders seeking patents have increased by 1%. Let's just hope we are getting 1% smarter.

Incisive Legal Intelligence released its 2009 Billing Rates and Practices Survey Report today giving interesting data on average lawyer billing rates:

The average hourly billing rate reported was $284. Nationally, plaintiffs' contingency litigation is the practice area with the highest average hourly billing rate ($413), followed by labor/employment ($302), general law ($295) and real estate/land use ($294). The billing rate survey data represents a sample of more than 14,000 lawyers throughout the 50 United States, drawn from responses from 255 law firms.

If I had to guess the average billing rate for attorneys nationally, this is pretty close to what I would have predicted. It would be interesting to see how much of that $284 dollars got collected in 2007 versus 2009.

If you want to buy the full report, it is available for $550. Are you kidding me? I think I've told you enough.

This is a funny story (via Overlawyered, via the AP). A Portland, Oregon lawyer blamed his BMW 535xi for a speeding ticket, claiming that he couldn't know that he was speeding.

C. Akin Blitz said he was just trying to get ahead of a line of cars following a motorhome over a mountain pass on U.S. Highway 26 -- that he had no idea his BMW 535xi was going 76 mph in a 55 mph zone because of its handling characteristics.

Funny right? But the funnier part is that he made a PowerPoint presentation and offered expert testimony from a mechanic. Now that is funny. Just the same, the judge found him guilty and ordered him to pay a fine.

While this is funny, what is not so funny is this: I'll bet you jurors would award less in a personal injury case if they read this article before giving their verdict. Americans are getting these kind of stories by the barrel. And it just does not help personal injury victims.

Bethany Kolenic writes a blog post for the Young Lawyers Blog on how to stay busy and productive when you have "nothing to do." I think it is good to try to apply these lessons during down time in an otherwise busy day. If you show up early for a hearing, the dentist, or whatever else.

One time I can't really "stay busy" is during breaks in a trial or while the jury is out. I'm either getting ready for what I have to do or I'm killing time. One day, I would like to have a Bill Clinton-like (he's second nod on this blog today before 8:45 a.m.!) ability to just compartmentalize and focus on making the most of my time in every moment. But I'm pretty sure I'll be twiddling my thumbs next time I have a jury out.

The Maryland Daily Record reports that a Rockville lawyer was suspended by the Maryland Court of Appeals. The slim minority of the court - 4-3 decision - voted for disbarment.

I don't know how I would vote on this. He failed to keep an IOLTA account which is a huge problem. The second "error" he made was loaning money to his client's relatives. Both are incredibly obvious no-nos.

These are bad offenses but not crimes of intent to cause anyone harm at the lawyer's own expense. But adding salt to the wound in the dissent's view was what brings down most people: the cover-up. Ask Nixon or Clinton. Judge Harrell's dissent makes clear that he did not find he was honest with bar counsel during its investigation.

The absence of “selfish or dishonest motives” generally, as found there by the hearing judge, may influence the sanction, but have no bearing on whether the violative conduct was unintentional or negligent in the first instance... Considered together, we are
confronted with intentional misappropriation, negligent misappropriation, obvious conflict
of interest, and intentional misrepresentations to Bar Counsel in the course of an
investigation. This array, I think, cuts to the core of what we should expect minimally from
a Maryland lawyer. “Candor and truthfulness are two of the most important moral character
traits of a lawyer.”

A footnote to Judge Harrell's dissent indicates that it "is probably of no great moment" to the lawyer whether the court disbars him or not because he intends to retire. I would may have had some impact on the Maryland Court of Appeals decision. I would think that you would hate to send a guy into retirement with a disbarment after what the majority opinion indicated was 40 years in practice. (Of course, this begs the question: why are you operating without an IOLTA account after 40 years of practicing law?)

You can find the full opinion here.

The Baltimore Sun reports that Frederick County reached a $300,000 settlement in the death of a fireman who died of heatstroke in 2002 while training for a full-time position with Frederick County. His family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the county after the 23-year old died, contending that Frederick County was responsible for the death because identifying the man heat stroke symptoms.

Tricia Bishop has an article in the Baltimore Sun on how lawyers stereotype jurors in Maryland. The title of the article is "Stereotypes Confound Jury Selection" and the subtitle is "Bias assumptions seldom right; juror's experiences called best indicator."

I disagree with the subtitle. I don't think assumption are "seldom right" but "usually right." But usually is not 99%, it is more like 60%.

The bigger point that the article misses is that while juror experiences are the best indicator, Maryland has what is probably the least probative voir dire in country, according to retired Howard County Judge Dennis M. Sweeney. So Maryland personal injury lawyers picking a jury have very limited means to determine juror experiences which leaves most Maryland lawyers making assumptions based on stereotypes that have varying degrees of accuracy depending on the stereotype. Of course, lawyers on both sides of the v are equally handicapped by this minimalist voir dire approach.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is getting heat because before she was elected to Congress in 2006, she spend much of her career as a lawyer working at a mega New York law firm representing the world’s largest cigarette company, Philip Morris. She apparently spend a good bit of time between 1995 to 1999 helping Philip Morris fight the Justice Department's efforts to get the tobacco company to produce damaging research and other internal documents regarding its knowledge about the health risks of tobacco products.

My first reaction is that you shouldn't judge people for the clients the represent. I defended drug companies during that same period of time and while I'm not proud of this, I'm not ashamed either. I'm sure Martin O'Malley is not ashamed of defending criminals. But Dorothy Samuels has a different take on it in the New York Times that I think deserves airing:

Professor Stephen Gillers of New York University Law School, one of the country’s leading legal ethics experts, draws a distinction between publicly criticizing lawyers because of the people they represent, which he says he would not do, and how they carry out the representation.

He finds the basic strategy that the tobacco companies pursued — pushing the limits of attorney-client privilege to hide inconvenient truths known to top company insiders about smoking and health — morally offensive, even if it violated no law or official legal ethics rules.

Ms. Gillibrand’s work for Philip Morris came during a pivotal period of mounting criticism and intensified legal scrutiny of the tobacco industry.

She tries to play down her role and suggests that she had no choice. In truth, she had plenty of choice.

Her law firm allowed lawyers to decline work on tobacco cases if they had a moral or ethical objection. It wasn’t simply a matter of working “for the clients that were assigned to her,” as an aide explained. Tobacco duty was optional. She opted in. Others did not.

Although not long out of law school, Ms. Gillibrand was given substantial responsibility. She worked closely with company executives. She became steeped in the workings of a lab the cigarette company had located outside the United States in Germany with the express purpose of keeping negative research findings that showed a connection between smoking and cancer out of public view and beyond the reach of American subpoenas.

She was privy to unsuccessful efforts to dissuade a smaller tobacco company, the Liggett Group, from breaking ranks and cooperating with prosecutors — a move, it was feared, that could result in the release of incriminating internal documents and a strengthening of Food and Drug Administration efforts to regulate the marketing and sale of cigarettes, including to children.

Ms. Gillibrand sat with some of the nation’s most prominent tobacco attorneys from different law firms on a special committee whose work included preventing plaintiffs and the government from seeing documents that Philip Morris wanted to remain secret.

Unlike lawyers who represent the indigent in criminal cases or the attorneys who endured mindless charges of disloyalty from the Bush administration for representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Ms. Gillibrand’s work for Philip Morris served no larger principle of due process. Had she turned down the tobacco assignment, other lawyers were readily available to take her place.

Her law firm allowed lawyers to decline work on tobacco cases if they had a moral or ethical objection. It wasn’t simply a matter of working “for the clients that were assigned to her,” as an aide explained. Tobacco duty was optional. She opted in. Others did not.