As a Baltimore-based recruiter, I see people all the time who want to make the transition here from Washington. They’re either tired of the commute or want a different quality of life.

And while both cities offer great opportunities for legal professionals, there are definite differences between the two legal markets.

For some people, Baltimore just isn’t going to cut it.  When I was a tour guide at the University of Maryland School of Law, there was more than one prospective student who said that they applied thinking the school was in College Park. These students weren’t sold on the idea of going to school in Baltimore.

Despite my love of Charm City, I do see their point. Washington has more large firms to offer, and D.C. is often viewed as more metropolitan; there’s more to do, you can rely completely on public transportation and the city draws transplants from all over the county.

But the transition from D.C. to Baltimore can be really difficult to make. Washington has thriving practice areas Baltimore really doesn’t have: immigration, intellectual property and defense contracting. There are also more opportunities to work with the government and nonprofits in the D.C. area. Not to mention salaries in Washington can be up to 20 percent higher than in Baltimore, although the cost of living in Baltimore is much lower. Baltimore law firms could be hesitant to hire someone if they think they are really set on D.C.

For new law school graduates, it’s important to think about where you want to live, what you want to practice and how those two things are going to meld together. Law schools offer lots of opportunities to work in different cities and practice areas while in still in school through internships, externships and law clerk positions. This is a great way to figure out what you want to do without the commitment.

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What if you could graduate from law school with a guaranteed job at a law firm, and this law firm promised to do its best to groom and train you from Year 1 through your first years as a junior associate?

The pay would not be commensurate with a Big Law salary, but you would get the experience necessary to move forward successfully in your career. In our current economy, I can’t think of too many unemployed law grads who would turn an offer down.

This is the proposal set forth by several law schools, including Brooklyn Law School and the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law: that law schools could open independently-operated law firms for recent graduates.

In an article slated for publication in the South Carolina Law Review, Brooklyn’s Bradley Borden and Maryland’s Robert Rhee discuss the concept of a law school “firm” akin to the teaching hospital learning experience for medical students. The law firm would be affiliated with the law school, but would remain an independent entity through professional management and revenue generation. Participation in a firm that functions like a real law firm would provide much better training than clinics offer as part of the curriculum for credit.

Salaries would be similar to the numbers offered in public interest positions to allow for more focus on training and education versus client billable hours, as well as provide much-needed legal representation to those below the poverty level. Another benefit to a law firm affiliated with a law school is that it would combat the growing trend of clients balking at paying bills connected to junior associate work. (See a Wall Street Journal blog post about the “value” of first-year associates.)

What are your thoughts? Would a law school-affiliated law firm relieve some of the deficiencies in junior attorney training and education within actual law firms? Would a law school-affiliated law firm operate more successfully than a clinic for credit in providing new attorneys with practical experience? How would this type of position compare to a judicial clerkship?

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Earlier this week, as I watched news footage of scores of people dressed as zombies protesting on Wall Street, I couldn’t help but think, “What a bunch of looney tunes.” I found it hard to take seriously a protest that seemingly lacked any focus.

But as the Occupy Wall Street movement gained more news coverage and the number of participants grew, I decided not to write it off as just another extreme, inchoate grassroots movement.

An interview on NPR with a 25-year-old unemployed college graduate in particular hit home: he expressed serious concern about his ability to make good on the student loan debt he had racked up. I began to identify with the 99%.

A sister movement with a narrower agenda — Occupy Colleges — has sprung up, concerned with mounting student loan debt and a dearth of employment upon graduation. While these concerns are not new, the Occupy Wall Street movement has put them on the front page of newspapers nationwide. Americans, especially young, educated Americans, are angry and they’re coming out in droves to show it.

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A couple weeks ago, my undergraduate alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had to launch an investigation into the LSAT and GPA numbers the law school reported to the American Bar Association about its incoming Class of 2014.

As the National Law Journal reported Sept. 12, if the allegations are true, the university would be the second school this year to be caught lying about the credentials of their law students. (Villanova was censured by the ABA and may have been reporting false numbers as far back as 2002.)

If one really thinks about it, what is the point of fudging your numbers when you are one of the most reputable public law schools in the great State of Illinois? (I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, so forgive my bias.)

Well, as law students across the country know, especially as we finish up the on-campus interview process for those highly-coveted law firm summer associate gigs, law firms choose to interview at only the top-ranked law schools. In order to be admitted into one of these law schools at the top of the pyramid, you need stellar LSAT scores and a really great GPA.

Those stellar LSAT scores and really great GPAs belonging to admitted students is what drives the ranking system released by U.S. News & World Report. The LSAT scores and GPAs of a law school’s incoming class account for nearly 25% the annual ranking; job placement rates account for 20%.

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As young lawyers, we tend to be bombarded with invitations to attend seminars, lectures, workshops, CLEs, roundtables, brown bag lunches, networking events, cocktail events and other non-billable educational and community-based activities. These invitations can come from other attorneys in our own firms, friends, bar associations, courts and our alma maters.

It can be hard to pick which events to attend, and — try as you might — you can’t attend them all.

Sometimes you attend an event because it relates to your practice area. Sometimes you go in support of an event sponsor or speaker. Sometimes, you go because you want to get involved with the organization that is hosting or sponsoring the event.

But sometimes, the description of an event that you would not otherwise attend catches your attention. Like the symposium that the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law is holding in honor of the life of Professor Hungdah Chiu early next month.

Professor Chiu was not only instrumental in getting UM law’s international law program and its East Asian Legal Studies Program off the ground, but also — among many other things — was a diplomat to the Mainland Affairs Council, which created the framework by which Taiwan and China now conduct diplomatic relations.

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When I was in law school, one of my first-year professors regaled us with many lawyer tales, including one about a confrontation he had with a dry cleaner.

His dry cleaner allegedly ruined a suit and refused to compensate him for his loss. After a heated discussion, my professor curtly told the dry cleaner he was going to sue him and it wouldn’t cost him one red cent because he was a lawyer.

Our professor said that pulling the lawyer card was a luxury that came with passing the bar. I’ve heard of others using the lawyer card in various situations, including car accidents, handyman disputes and even bar fights.

Admittedly, in certain circumstances I’ve been tempted to use the lawyer trump card, but I’m not sure it gets attorneys very far on a micro or macro level.

You can be certain that once you tell someone you’re an attorney and you can sue him at no expense, you have just upped the adversarial ante. Furthermore, you’re not doing much to abate the general public’s negative perception of attorneys by acting with a sense of entitlement.

I’m not sure there’s a “right” time to pull the lawyer card. Whenever I’m inclined to do it, I follow the Ravens’ fan conduct policy, which I think is a good policy in most circumstances: don’t be a jerk!

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