Maryland Lawyers for the Arts has undergone a makeover.

The biggest change means my first sentence is technically incorrect. The organization, which offers pro bono assistance and lawyer referral service to artists and arts groups, is now called Maryland Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (MdVLA).

“The change is meant to clarify the volunteer nature of the organization’s mission,” said Marcia Semmes, MdVLA’s executive director, in a statement. “Despite the fact that MdVLA has been helping Maryland artists since 1985, some people remained unclear about its purpose and questions like, ‘Is it a group of lawyers who like art?’ were common.”

The organization also has new logo, website and office space, the latter part of a community of nonprofits at Union Mill in Baltimore. And it still continues to publish its quarterly newsletter, “Arts Brief,” which has one of the best slogans around — “Left-Brain Support for Right-Brain People.”

(The photo, by the way, is of Laura Schandelmeier and Stephen Clapp, married professional dancers, at their Dancenow Productions studio in Mt. Rainier in 2008. I talked to Clapp for my story on MdVLA after the couple had been assigned an attorney through to help Dancenow become a nonprofit. The group is now known as Dance Box Theater.)

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Brackets, shmackets — Give me a good half-court shot with five figures on the line any day. From Georgetown Law comes this video of student Aladdin Jaloudi sinking it during Home Court 24, the annual fundraiser that pits Georgetown law professors against members of Congress. Final score: Hoya Lawyas 49, Hill’s Angels 61, Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless $415,000,  and Jaloudi, $10,000.

Not bad, for a second-year.

HT: Former Daily Record-er Richard Simon, now the web editor at GULC.

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Good morning! Here are some law links for your pre-Solstice perusal:

• Judge drops thousands of John Doe porn sharers from industry copyright infringement case.
• In court, come dressed to impress, but remain who you are.
• A Post editorial says the problems in Prince George’s County stem from residents’ “apathy.”
• Tweens fight for their right to show their support for breast cancer research — but school officials say their “I [heart] boobies” bracelets are vulgar.
• A pro cyclist says she was disqualified from racing for taking a supplement that contained a banned substance, but it wasn’t on the label.
• TSA officer used scanners to find and lift travelers’ valuables.
• Security sells.

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Last year at this time, Mike Hamburg was preparing to bike around northern Israel to raise money for a children’s hospital in Jerusalem. This year’s Wheels of Love charity ride will take him on a route near Israel’s borders with Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

“A bunch of Jewish doctors and lawyers biking near Gaza; nothing good can happen,” the Pikesville lawyer joked Monday. (For the record, police escorts accompany riders throughout the five-day bike ride.)

Read the rest of this entry »

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Maryland Lawyers for the Arts is marking its 25th anniversary with a “Conference on Creativity & Law” tomorrow afternoon at the American Visionary Art Museum. The conference is free and open to non-lawyers, but you need to RSVP here.

Marcia Semmes, MLA’s executive director (pictured left), called it a “do-it-your-self copyright event,” featuring discussions on copyright law and a screening of “Copyright Criminals,” a documentary about music sampling that will be followed by a talk from filmmaker Kembrew McLeod.

“We think all of the pieces are there for an interesting afternoon,” Semmes said.

That MLA is celebrating its 25th birthday is an interesting story in itself. The organization existed in name only by the late 1990s until it re-launched in 2006. Two years later, MLA started “Arts Brief,” a quarterly e-newsletter that now has more than 10,000 subscribers. Semmes said she received a call from an artist in Washington State this week asking if Saturday’s conference will be available online. (It won’t, she added, but future events might.)

Semmes said MLA still wants to increase its reach beyond the Baltimore region, where most of its volunteers and artists reside. It will also be planning an event this fall to formally celebrate 25 years.

“We face the same challenges as any non-profit, but, knock on wood, we’re as stable as we’ve ever been,” she said.

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Caroline Farrell did not meet David Gaudin while in Mississippi earlier this month with the Maryland Law Katrina Project. But when a foreclosure attorney from the Mississippi Center for Justice shared with her Gaudin’s story, Farrell knew she needed to help a stranger.

Gaudin has terminal cancer; doctors give him less than six months to live. His illness forced him to stop working, and he subsequently fell behind on his mortgage. Wells Fargo, Gaudin’s bank, threatened to foreclose on his home. Gaudin and his foreclosure lawyer rejected the bank’s proposed loan modification late last year – three months’ forbearance followed by a large, balloon payment.

The bank now wants to move forward with foreclosure proceedings against Gaudin after rejecting his request for a loan modification because of an outstanding balance of $650 on his account.

“This is so heartbreaking,” Farrell said. “It seems so egregious that the bank can’t be flexible.”

That the sticking point was a couple hundred dollars also bothered Farrell, a 3L and president of the Katrina Project.

“I said, ‘We could raise this in an hour,’” she said.

She’ll have three hours to do it Friday night beginning at 9 p.m. at Quigley’s Half-Irish Pub near the law school. All proceeds from the $10 admission fee will go toward erasing Gaudin’s outstanding account balance. Farrell and her classmates have been spreading the word through listservs and Facebook, and Farrell is confident the event will raise more than enough money for Gaudin.

(Farrell said donations can also be made online by writing “The campaign to save David’s house” in the comments section.)

As for the beneficiary, Farrell said Gaudin cried upon learning what the Maryland students were doing for him. He’s now in regular contact with Farrell, a stranger no more.

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Happy Monday! Though the government employees are lucky enough to have the day off, I suspect most of the rest of those in the legal field are slogging away today. To that end, here are a few law links to start your work week:

• I thought there’d be more outrage at the Semsker decision from the personal injury blogosphere, but it’s been pretty quiet. I did find a couple of bloggers holding forth about the Court of Appeals’ decision not to upset the cap on non-economic damages. Ron Miller says the ruling will lead to more malpractice trials. And in a weirdly third-person blog entry, the Semskers’ lawyer, Patrick Malone, says the caps “impose a tax on the most severely injured victims of provable malpractice.”
• Peter Hermann writes about Glenn Footman, badly injured in a presumed hate-crime shooting last year. Footman died of his injuries months after the shooting, but before the criminal injuries compensation board got around to making an award, and now his long-term partner can’t collect anything. HT: Baltimore Crime.
• Concurring Opinions asks whether punishments should be harsher for people who perpetrate fake charity scams than for those who perpetrate get-rich-quick scams.
• Ooh, a Supreme Court fantasy league! Thanks to Constitutional Law Prof Blog for the link.
• Being a young lawyer stinks these days. So says the NYT. (HT: How Appealing.)

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Were you wondering why Venable was one of
the sponsors of the Maryland Zoo’s new prairie dog
habitat?

No? Well, I was curious about the firm’s affinity for
the critters, so I asked.

Here’s the answer from former chairman Ben Civiletti, forwarded to me by a firm spokesman:

Our partner, Rob Zinkham, is on the Zoo Board and he appealed to the [Venable] Foundation to support the Zoo which was in dire straits several years ago. Because the Zoo is important to the children of the community, we made an unrestricted donation last year of $10,000 and a significant amount in the prior two years. We knew that the Zoo was making a special effort to develop an appealing attraction to little children called “Prairie Dog Town.” The Zoo intended to use our donation and that of other private donors to attract enough funds to install “Prairie Dog Town.” I assume that if enough funds were not developed, they would have used our unrestricted gift in other ways to improve the Zoo.

The vast majority of our contributions go for the needs of the poor, children, the arts, the elderly, the profession and victims of abuse.

Of course, The Sun writes today that the rascally rodents immediately tried to escape their new digs (pun intended–sorry), and some got pretty close to success:

As officials were promoting the return of the zoo’s 28 prairie dogs – their former digs had been out of sight in a closed section of the animal preserve for more than four years – some of the critters found ways to jump, climb and get over the walls of their prairie paradise, a centerpiece exhibit just inside the zoo’s main entrance.

None got away, but for a few anxious minutes, they found every weakness in the enclosure built to hold them. Zookeepers had to bring out nets to catch escapees.

This might have been a little embarrassing for the zoo, but it could be the start of a great new marketing campaign for Venable. I’m seeing a video of the prairie dogs intrepidly trying every path they can think of to get out, and then a tagline along the lines of, “Our lawyers don’t take no for an answer” or “Venable: We’ll find a way.” What law firm wouldn’t want to be associated with burrowing rodents?

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The Golf Fore Heart charity tournament has grown steadily in its first two years, raising $30,000 in 2007 and $51,000 in 2008. The fundraiser is just hitting its stride, so I was curious as to how the current economy is affecting plans for the third tournament, scheduled for June 17 at Mountain Branch Golf Cub in Joppa. (Proceeds benefit the Society for Heart Attack Prevention and Eradication  — SHAPE – and several local charities.)

Perhaps not surprisingly, the economy “was a worry and has proven to be an issue,” according to JoAnne Zawitoski, the event’s founder. “It’s going to be a challenge this year.”

Zawitoski, of Semmes, Bowen & Semmes, said some people and businesses want to participate but have already exhausted their charity budget – if they had a charity budget at all this year. Others have dropped down a sponsorhip level.

Zawitoski said she and other event organizers will be making “personal appeals” as June 17 draws closer.

“I’m hoping to have as good a turnout as last year,” she said, adding she anticipates the event raising “a little less” than it did in 2008.

Despite the economy, Zawitoski said the cause has made strides. SHAPE helped pass new legislation in Texas that would require insurance companies to pay for heart scans of people at risk for heart disease, and President Barack Obama has made improved preventive care a priority.

“We think this is a good year for heart attack prevention measures in state legislatures,” she said.

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Two notable examples of philanthropy last week from the Maryland legal community:

• Golf Fore Heart 2008 raised more than $51,000 for the Society for Heart Attack and Prevention Education (SHAPE) on Wednesday. JoAnne Zawitoski, the event’s co-chair, said more than 100 golfers teed it up at Mountain Branch Golf Club in Joppa. Zawitoski, a principal at Semmes, Bowen & Semmes in Baltimore, started the event last year in honor of her late husband, Guy Fernandez, an avid golfer who passed away suddenly of a heart attack in four years ago. Zawitoski is also a board member of SHAPE.

• The Baltimore County Bar Association donated $10,000 to the Family Crisis Center of Baltimore County Inc. during its Stated Meeting on Thursday. The donation came out of funds remaining from a settlement in Taylor v. Savings First Mortgage LLC, a predatory-lending class action that originated in Baltimore. Savings First repaid $1.1 million to approximately 2,400 customers; as part of the settlement agreement, the crisis center was one of several charities designated to receive money not claimed by consumers. Richard S. Gordon, Kieron F. Quinn of Quinn Gordon & Wolf Chtd. in Towson and Benjamin H. Carney of the Holland Law Firm P.C. in Annapolis were lead counsel in the case.

DANNY JACOBS, Legal Affairs Writer

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