Paul Allen

Happy Monday! While Danielle tries not to be a hurricane, finding those delicious legal tidbits is up to me. Here we go:

• Law Shucks calls it Paul Allen’s “gift to BigLaw”: the Microsoft founder is suing Google, Apple, YouTube and other Internet giants for patent violations.
• A group of Kansans is arguing the state’s selection and appointment process for Supreme Court justices violates the 14th Amendment because some commission members are only selected by lawyers. (HT: Constitutional Law Prof.)
• Thank you, Legal Marketing Blog.com!
• Meet the lawyer who will be representing Roger Clemens in the star pitcher’s federal perjury case. (HT: WSJ’s Law Blog.)
• Disturbing, potentially devastating news from the Jersey Shore. (I never thought anything could overshadow “That’s one shot!“)

A few years ago I was chatting with a local attorney whom I’d gotten to know in my technology reporting days. He and a few colleagues were leaving their big law firm to start a Baltimore office of another firm.

His entrepreneurial ambitions intrigued me, as did his reasons for wanting to strike out on his own — pressure to bill hours, a desire to work more closely and strategically with smaller clients. They seemed fairly universal, not just unique to the practice of law (at least if you substitute in “pressure to close sales” for “pressure to bill hours”).

A recent article at Slate breaks down the legal business model in post-economic meltdown terms and paints a pretty stark portrait of a model “in which the nation’s largest law firms turn the top law students into billable-hour-crazed associates and, sometimes, partners.”

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The kids are back to school and you’re at work. Take a minute to check out some law links to start the week.

• Copyright laws might prevent public consumption of the Savory collection — a treasure trove of jazz recordings from the 1930s and 1940s.
• Two couples with ties to the Maryland legal community made the New York Times Weddings/Celebrations page.
• Virginia’s AG says the state can further regulate abortion clinics.
• The Maryland Injury Law Blog is supporting sitting judges Laura Kiessling and Ronald Jarashow in the race for Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge — even though they say only 11 people could make an informed decision in that race.
• Lots of students on other career tracks work for free in summer internships, but law schools in Florida are refusing to post requests seeking summer associates who will work for free because of labor laws.
• More and more are leaving big law behind.
• The Huffington Post has a Q&A with Pastor Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Longtime Cleveland Plain Dealer classical music critic Don Rosenberg last week lost his lawsuit against the paper and the Cleveland Orchestra, which he alleged forced him out of his position because of negative reviews in 2008. (Rosenberg has been re-assigned on the paper’s staff.)

Many in the classical music world have already weighed in. But I thought the best takes were those that spoke of the larger issue at play here: the role of the arts and the arts critic in society. It’s something Glenn Beck has discussed in recent weeks, taking Baltimore to task for maintaining funding levels on the Lyric despite all of its budget woes.

Martin Bernheimer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, wrote in the Financial Times that Rosenberg’s case is an “alarming sign of the times”:

As government cuts of arts subsidies start to bite all over Europe, especially in Britain, there is talk of relying on “the American model.” That means an increased reliance on individual contributions – which goes along with an acceptance, presumably, of the individual powers that accompany substantial donations. Where does critical independence fit into this?

Chicago Tribune movie critic Michael Phillips wrote it’s a healthy sign when the triangular relationship between critic, newspaper and art community gets “sticky.”

There is so much fear and self-censorship in the critics’ ranks in America today. There are so few full-time salaries. You can smell the caution and paranoia in too many reviews weighed down by generalities and a stenographer’s devotion to “objectivity,” which isn’t what this endeavor is about at all. It’s about informed, vividly argued subjectivity.

Phillips also responded to Beck:

Criticism is a way of writing about life, and the world, and a symphony’s place in it, or a performer’s, or a photograph’s. …[N]o matter how frightening the economy, we must remind ourselves that we demonize the humanities… at the risk of becoming a nation we don’t want to become.

Mike Ertel decided last month not to take legal action against Bill Paulshock, one of his Democratic primary opponents in the Baltimore County Council’s Fifth District, over the allegedly incorrect address Paulshock lists on his voter registration form. Ertel’s campaign manager told me in July that they would “bring the matter to the public’s attention” and allow voters to decide what to do with their allegations rather than file suit.

The Ertel campaign’s new YouTube video on the subject begins with Ertel in front of what he claims to be Paulshock’s true residence in the Third District community of Kingsville. The video then cuts to Ertel standing outside of Bill’s Seafood and Catering Co. on Belair Road in Perry Hall, which is attached to a home that Paulshock has said is his “domicile.”

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Now that the blogger behind Law is 4 Losers and Big Debt Small Law has outed himself, deleted both blogs and is getting quoted by mainstream media for the theory that law school is “really just a big Ponzi scheme” (HT: ATL), what’s next? Here are some law links to keep you on the Internet:

• A California court rejected the “stray remarks” doctrine in an age discrimination case against Google. Might sound far-fetched now, but the Maryland Employment Law Developments blog notes that Cali cases often start nationwide trends.
• Maureen Sweeney at the Maryland Law Faculty Blog has some suggested summer reading for President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. (Photo credit: AP)
• For trial – make a list; check it twice.
• Looking to increase foot traffic in your law library? Just add a ’60s-inspired girl band and watch interest grow.
• Two possible Republican presidential hopefuls are weighing in on Iowa’s debate over whether to unseat three state Supreme Court justices after they approved same-sex marriage. “If a majority of Iowans vote ‘no,’ that will send a signal to the whole country that there is a citizens revolt under way,” according to Newt Gingrich.
• Jodie Fisher — the woman linked to former HP CEO Mark Hurd — wanted to be a lawyer before she got into film.

All writers will tell you there is no feeling worse than wanting to put pen to paper and drawing a blank. But having the words gush out like water through a broken dam can be just as perilous. I worry in that situation that what I truly want to say will get washed away in a flood of secondary thoughts.

I imagine the latter scenario must weigh on the minds of people giving victim impact statements in court. How do you relive one of your worst moments in front of the person who caused your grief and pain? Emotions become raw all over again. I don’t think it is a coincidence that some victims prefer to submit a written statement or let someone else read what they wrote.

Joby Luca’s voice trembled at times Tuesday as he read his victim impact statement during the sentencing of his mother, Mary Koontz, in the shooting death of her estranged husband, Ron, and attempted murder of their daughter, Kelsey.

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Can the Maryland Judiciary serve as a useful model for the U.S. Supreme Court?

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., seems to think so.

Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said he might introduce legislation to enable retired justices to sit in on cases when a current justice has recused himself or herself. Sound familiar?

In Maryland, retired judges regularly sit in by special assignment for their recused brethren and sistren without much complaint from the bench or bar. If, say, Court of Appeals Judge Sally D. Adkins must recuse herself, the high court can turn to retired Judge John C. Eldridge to take her place, thus preserving its full complement of seven judges to hear the case.

Similarly, Leahy’s yet-to-be-introduced proposal would enable the Supreme Court to field its full complement of nine justices in the dozen pending cases in which new Justice Elena Kagan has said she will not participate. Kagan said she must recuse herself because she worked on those cases in the lower courts in her last job as U.S. solicitor general.

To pinch-sit for Kagan, the Supreme Court could turn to its retirees, Sandra Day O’Connor, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens, under the Leahy plan.

“If there  is a way for retired justices to help the court fulfill its role in our democracy, I think we should consider it,” the senator told The Washington Post.

But there is perhaps a strong argument for preserving the status quo with regard to the Supreme Court and its Maryland counterpart.

O’Connor, Souter and Stevens held lifetime appointments to the bench. Thus, they voluntarily doffed their robes by retiring and, arguably, should not be permitted to don them on a part-time basis.

In Maryland, by contrast, most judges do not retire voluntarily so much as have retirement thrust upon them by the state constitution after reaching age 70. The least the state can do after sending these judges fishing is to reel them back in on occasion, the argument goes.

What do you think of the Leahy plan?

Among a flurry of endorsement e-mails I received yesterday from the campaign of Baltimore County executive candidate Joe Bartenfelder, one stood out.

“BARTENFELDER’S RUN FOR COUNTY EXECUTIVE ENDORSED BY SUZANNE MENSH, LONG-STANDING ELECTED OFFICIAL,” the headline read.

The press release from the Bartenfelder campaign goes on to describe Mensh as being the court clerk “from 1986 until the present.” Which must have come as a surprise to Rick Arnold, the incumbent.

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The ABA’s Special Committee on the U.S. News and World Report Rankings issued its findings last month. The committee, which included University of Maryland School of Law Dean Phoebe Haddon, stated the following:

We believe that, for better or worse, U.S. News rankings will continue for the foreseeable future to dominate public perceptions of how law schools compare, and that there is relatively little that leaders in legal education can do to change that in the short term.

A 2009 law school graduate named “Ethan Haines” (more on the quotation marks in a bit) disagrees. Haines is the founder of unemployedjd.com and says he represents fellow graduates and law school students “who have been disillusioned by law school employment statistics, commercial school rankings, and antiquated career counseling programs.”

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