Lawyers across the country have been talking about New York’s new mandate requiring those seeking to join the bar to complete 50 hours of pro bono work.

New York will be the first state to institute such a requirement, which will take effect starting next year. New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman announced the requirement May 1.

Since then, lawyers have been discussing the pros and cons of the rule. Some say it won’t do anything to help needy clients and unnecessarily burden incoming lawyers. Others contend it will turn new lawyers on to pro bono service.

Bloomberg BNA asked lawyers around the country what they think.

Ben Trachtenberg, professor at the University of Missouri School of Law: “While I completely appreciate the motive behind Chief Judge Lippman’s plan, and there’s a tremendous access to justice problem, I don’t think this is a particularly effective or fair way to solve the problem.”

Michael Millemann, professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law: Chief Judge Lippman’s decision to require 50 hours of pro bono service for admission to the bar is a good step in the right direction.”

Robert N. Weiner, partner, Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C.: “The issue is whether there will be enough resources to ensure that the people doing the pro bono are getting supervised, and getting to represent the right clients, and actually serving their clients The existing infrastructure will need to be supplemented dramatically to have the capacity to accommodate all this pro bono service.”

Questions remain about the implementation and organization of the requirement (some lawyers even want to extend the rule to existing lawyers) and the New York State Bar Association has created a task force to address the issue. What impact New York’s move will have on other states also remains to be seen.

Do you think Maryland should make pro bono work a prerequisite for admission to the bar?

The George Washington University Law School is the latest to drop its enrollment as fewer people applied to law school for the upcoming academic year.

GW Law plans to keep its enrollment below 450, compared to this year’s class of 474, the National Law Journal reports.

Law schools across the country are grappling with upcoming fall enrollment in the face of the declining number of people taking the LSAT and even fewer applying to law school.

The University of California Hastings College of the Law announced this year that it also plans to decrease enrollment. Albany Law School, Creighton University School of Law and Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center also reduced class sizes during the 2011-2012 school year.

GW Law saw its number of applicants fall 15 percent, Law Dean Paul Schiff Berman told the Journal. It will lose some tuition revenue but plans to recoup it in increased fundraising and introducing new programs for students outside the law school, Berman said.

Baltimore schools are experiencing the similar problems. The University of Baltimore School of Law told The Daily Record  in March that its applicant numbers were down 17 percent this admissions cycle, but University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law officials were less concerned.

WBAL-TV 11 News reported Tuesday that Baltimore Sun reporter Tricia Bishop passed out during the trial of the Werdesheim brothers this morning and that one of the defendants went to her aid.

Avi and Eliyahu Werdesheim, Orthodox Jewish and white, are accused of beating a black teen in an Baltimore neighborhood while Eliyahu was patrolling for an Orthodox Jewish watch group.

WBAL reporter Lowell Melser tweeted that Avi jumped out of his seat to administer aid when Bishop passed out. Bishop was OK when she was led out of the Mitchell Courthouse by emergency workers, according to Melser.

The trial has been going on since last week and has been drawing national attention due to its similarities to the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, where a black teen was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch patrolman.

The local law world is going Hollywood this week.

The Baltimore office of DLA Piper was featured in the season premiere of the new HBO show, “Veep,” which premiered Sunday night. The show stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus, best known as Elaine on “Seinfeld”, as the vice president of the United States.

The comedy follows Louis-Dreyfus’s character, Selina Meyer, and her staff as they navigate the inroads of Washington, D.C. Meyer spends the pilot episode trying to assert herself in her new role. There are many bumps along the way for Meyer as she tries to carve out a place as second-in-command.

She organizes a meeting to push for green initiatives, which no one attends. She is forced into making a speech at a fundraiser in place of the president, during which she makes a series of bad jokes and a political gaffe. Throughout the episode, she repeatedly asks her secretary if the president has called, to which the answer is always “No.”

In one scene, Meyer goes to a senator’s office to lobby for a green initiative she is working on to replace plastic forks in government buildings with ones made of cornstarch. The scene was filmed at DLA Piper, whose offices are at The Marbury Building, 6225 Smith Ave.

About 100 members of the cast and crew showed up to film for the day; a wing on the second floor of the law offices was transformed to look like a fictional Nevada senator’s suite.

The cast and crew only filmed at the law offices for a day. When filming went late into the night, the crew had to shine lights into the office from outside.

The show also filmed in DLA Piper’s hallway as Meyer and her staff are leaving. The same hallway was used for a scene in the 2005 movie, “Syriana,” starring George Clooney.

Though Yale, Stanford and Harvard law schools may be top of the class this year according to U.S. News & World Report rankings, the University of Baltimore School of Law may have won the popularity contest.

The University of Baltimore School of Law had one of the highest increases in enrollment in 2011, U.S. News & World Report announced Tuesday.

Enrollment at law schools dropped 2 percent nationally last year compared to the previous admissions cycle. UB Law, however, saw a 3.7 percent increase in enrollment from the previous year. Of the students it accepted, 38.5 percent enrolled, giving it the tenth-highest increase in year-to-year enrollment in 2011.

UB Law placed 113th in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings released earlier this month.

The University of Virginia School of Law had the highest increased enrollment with 51.9 percent of its accepted students enrolling, a 12 percent increase from the previous year. Georgia State University College of Law came in second with a 52.7 percent enrollment rate, a 9.1 percent increase from the year before. The University of North Carolina School of Law took third place with a 53.7 percent enrollment rate, a 7.2 percent increase from the previous year.

Law schools sent out a total 175,085 acceptance letters in 2011 but only enrolled 44,366 students.

Baltimore City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young has made a habit recently of voting against settlements for police misconduct lawsuits, saying that better training would prevent many of the costly suits.

But Young voted for the $245,000 settlement for former police helicopter pilot Samuel K. Miller that was approved unanimously at Wednesday’s Board of Estimates meeting. Miller had accused his superiors in the Aviation Unit of ostracizing him and tricking him into resigning in 2007 after he wrote a letter that detailed waste and misuse of the unit’s resources, including a “dog and pony show” helicopter landing at the school of the unit commander’s children.

After voting with his colleagues to approve Miller’s settlement, Young called Miller a “whistleblower.”

“I respect that,” Young said. “He should not have been disciplined or lost his job because of that.”

Young voted against a $45,000 settlement for Rodney Hueston, whose lawsuit alleged officers Anthony S. Weems and Renard D. Owens broke his left arm during an unlawful arrest in 2009. Charges of resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and possession of an open container of alcohol were dropped against Hueston after he was treated for his injuries.

Hueston’s settlement was approved despite Young’s “No” vote.

Some next-day thoughts on the unexpected outcome of the two-and-a-half-day bankruptcy hearing of Alter Communications, publisher of the Baltimore Jewish Times (in which the judge rejected the restructuring plans of both Alter and its printer-turned-creditor, H.G. Roebuck & Son Inc.):

The federal judge in the case, James F. Schneider, lightened the proceedings several times with his ultra-dry wit. At one point Maria Ellena Chavez-Ruark, Alter’s attorney, was reading back word-for-word Schneider’s decision to confirm Alter’s plan in December — a decision that was later overturned by a higher court.

“It sounds so good and yet the (U.S.) District Court reversed it,” Schneider interrupted with a wistful sigh. “Such lovely prose.”

But when it came time for Schneider to make his decision he turned deathly serious, calling out not only the parties involved for their two years of bitter litigation but also their attorneys for attempting to play on his emotions.

Schneider prefaced his remarks by saying he thought Ruark and Roebuck’s attorneys, William L. Hallam and Kevin J. Pascale were some of the finest lawyers he knew. The judge then proceeded to scold them for “the extent they’ve gotten so close to the facts and issues of this case that they’ve lost their objectivity and taken on the personas of their  clients.”

Ouch.

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“Great morning, everyone,” Baltimore City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young said in calling to order today’s giddy, post-election Board of Estimates meeting.

There was plenty of back-slapping between Young and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, whose victories were nearly as dominant as the Ravens’ beatdown of the Steelers two days ago. The normally staid mayor also wryly congratulated comptroller Joan M. Pratt on her “hard-fought” re-election (Pratt ran unopposed).

But once the good vibes died down and the council bit into the meat of the meeting, Young disagreed with the rest of his colleagues on a $30,000 police misconduct settlement , casting the lone “no” vote as the settlement slid through on the consent agenda.

Though it was a relatively small settlement, Young spokesman Lester Davis said the council president wants to send a message that the city is spending too much on police misconduct claims as a whole. He said Young thinks the police department should provide better training to prevent the legitimate claims and the city should be more willing to go to court and fully challenge less solid claims.

“He’s been pretty consistent in terms of wanting to get his message across,” Davis said. “For him, it’s just a belief that the city can not afford to continue to pay out this money.”

According to the city’s Law Department, the city spent $7.25 million settling police misconduct claims between mid-2007 and mid-2010.

Looks like it’s going to be another hot week in paradise Maryland this week. Cool off with this week’s legal news below.

• More Casey Anthony hubbub. A Texas search company is suing Anthony over the money it spent looking for her daughter, Caylee. The company says Anthony knew her daughter was dead, although she said the girl was alive.
• Mock juries in the Casey Anthony case also found her not guilty.
• The backdrop to Nicole Sesker’s homicide. The stepdaughter of a Baltimore police commissioner was killed in 2008.
• Does the Maryland Local Tort Claims Act make sense?
• When I say “go” you say “fight.” Go. Fight. Go. Fight. A cheerleader loses her suit over not making the squad.
• Name something you’re not supposed to discuss at work. Survey says: salary.
• Sorry, but this baby is not for sale.

Welcome back. Here’s a rundown of what’s happening in the legal world:

• In civil suit, the lawyer repping the man killed by Baltimore City Police Officer Ghaiji Tshamba will focus on the officer’s disciplinary record.
• Banks continue to be in the hot seat over the foreclosure crisis. Did some banks wait to alert regulators about loans going south?
• New York man allowed to sue his county for the cost to rent a Ferrari.
• Judge-directed negotiation could curb increasing malpractice costs in healthcare.
• Did it happen the way we think it did? Listening in on LBJ’s civil rights conversations.
• Maryland’s ACLU is questioning a petition to overturn the DREAM Act.