ON THE COVER: Dealing with slow-paying clients — Lawyers see a rise in the percentage of past-due accounts.

University of Baltimore School of Law gets $500,000 in federal funds to expand its Truancy Court Program.

In Breaking News, a challenge to an Attorney Grievance Commission subpoena fails; a Bethesda family law firm breaks up; the Court of Appeals revives a $13 million verdict; and the top court says that a DNA testing law applies retroactively.

Read about a $64,000 damage award to a man who lost his house in a foreclosure rescue scheme and an Army captain who took $1.25 milion for car-crash injuries in Verdicts & Settlements.

 Jack L.B. Gohn writes about “advice of counsel” in The Big Picture.

Read about whether lawyers think Judge Sotomayor should become Justice Sotomayor in this week’s Interrogatory.

Stay up-to-date with our Legal Briefs and Law Digest, with cases from the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. District Court, Maryland.

For my story today about lawyers getting paid slowly or not at all, I spoke to Sonya Smith-Valentine, a Greenbelt consumer rights attorney. According to Smith-Valentine’s (admittedly unscientific) analysis of what kinds of cases she is working on now, the economy’s going to get a lot better in short order.

She said the type of work she gets at any given time serves as something of a leading indicator. When things are about to get bad, she starts seeing more clients who want to get debt collectors off their backs. When the economy is about to get better, she starts getting more people who need her to help them with credit issues; they are about to make a big purchase, such as a house or car, and want to get their credit in order.

“For awhile, all my calls have been about debt issues,” Smith-Valentine told me. “They’ve started to switch back to credit issues.”

Happy Monday! It’s indeed a happy day here at The Daily Record, as we now have phone and Internet access again. (We were down Thursday and Friday, which was somewhat inconvenient.) Now that I’m connected to the world again, I can bring you a few law links to start your day:

•  Ron Miller spars with Ron Miller over tort reform.
•  ”I would have advised Professor Gates and all other suspects not to open the door of their homes to the police without a warrant,” writes Jon Katz.
• Carolyn Elefant writes about why you should “enjoy” and “savor” your bar exam prep.
• Women of color don’t tend to stick around at big law firms, a new study says. Above the Law also points out, citing the ABA Journal, that minority women in a previous study said that, “Many minority women lawyers of the same ethnicity were often addressed with the same name.” Yikes.
• What does Obama’s Sotomayor pick mean for whom he can nominate for future Supreme Court vacancies? (HT: How Appealing.)