Baltimore County Public Schools opened two weeks ago, and for the first time in two years it will not have to provide monitoring reports on its homeless students based on a federal lawsuit settlement two years ago. That’s because the Public Justice Center, which brought the lawsuit, found the school system has significantly improved its treatment of homeless students.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of three homeless families alleged BCPS “failed or refused… to identify, inform and provide educational stability and continuity to these homeless students” as required under a 1987 federal law. A consent decree reached as part of the settlement required monitoring reports and training of personnel.

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Jay Perman, the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s new president, has no problem being known as a nice guy. His annual commencement speech while dean at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine was even about the importance of doctors being nice to patients.

But Perman told reporters and editors at The Daily Record last week that what surprises him are people who view nice as a liability. He recalled early in his career a colleague at the University of California, San Francisco, said Perman “would never make it” because of his niceness.

“So ha-ha,” Perman said dryly. “I’m here to say that’s not true.”

Perman describes himself as nice by nature but also in a pragmatic way.

“When you’re nice, it becomes that much easier to demand of those who are not nice that they shape up or get out,” he said. “That’s why it’s been so effective for me.”

That Perman is a pediatrician has also helped him as an administrator. (You can insert your own joke here about what caring for children and overseeing a faculty have in common.)

“I think if there’s a case for a leader being nice, that sort of self-selection goes into choosing pediatrics,” he said. ‘There are no harsher critics of nasty adults than children. They will not have it.”

OK, so this isn’t strictly about law. I mean, it is insofar as it relates to the governor’s race and the governor signs things into law and both major candidates are lawyers. But really, it’s about grammar. Bear with me.

I just got a press release from the O’Malley campaign entitled, “Ehrlich’s ‘Faux’ Education Facts.” It goes on to use “faux,” in quotes, twice in the body of the press release. What the O’Malley folks are clearly trying to say is that Ehrlich’s facts are phony. What they are actually doing is casting doubt on the phoniness of Ehrlich’s facts by putting the word faux in quotes. It’s like when a store advertises, “Sale today! 50 percent off ‘everything’ in the store!” The store wants to emphasize that everything they have is on sale, but what they end up doing is making people wonder what’s not on sale.

What the O’Malley campaign should have done was used one of the two following titles: 1) “Ehrlich’s Faux Education Facts” (no quotation marks) or 2) “Ehrlich’s Education ‘Facts’” (quotation marks around the correct word).

To recap today’s lesson from an uptight grammar nerd: quotation marks are not for emphasis. Use them sparingly and wisely. And if you want a good laugh, go visit the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.

(Note: The headline is the first of several bee references I plan to pollinate throughout this blog post. You’ve been warned.)

The University of Baltimore reintroduced its Bee mascot on campus Thursday. The Bee has been part of UB since 1937, but was largely extinct from campus for 30 years. It was more of a reflection of the campus demographics (a lot of part-time, adult students who commuted) than any allergic reaction to a mascot.

“I don’t think there was much of a push because people didn’t care,” said Susan Luchey, director of the Center for Student Involvement.

That changed in recent years with the re-introduction of undergraduate classes. The newest freshmen had been bugging the administration about a mascot, drawing bees in the school newspaper and even giving it a Facebook page.

“They’re looking for an identity in their school, and a mascot is one of those ways,” Luchey said. “Students are excited, but they’re almost embarrassed to say they’re excited.”

Spencer Mierzejewski, a first-year law student, is not one of those students. Mierzejewski got stung by mascot fever after he heard a UB alum utter the phrase “Super Bees.” Having never heard the phrase and shocked the school even had a mascot, he decided to find out more and wrote about spotting bees all over campus on UB’s official blog.

“It’s nice to have something recognizable that stands for the University of Baltimore,” he said.

Mierzejewski said he’d like to see the Bee land in a moot court session. Luchey said the Bee will be at many university functions, from open houses to orientations to graduations. Alumni have already inquired about the Bee making an appearance at their events, Luchey added.

“It’s another notch in the belt of UB becoming a traditional campus,” she said.

Janet Wallace is a 3L who, along with her husband, made an unusual New Year’s resolution this year: by year’s end, they would move to California’s Central Coast. Now, over at Ms. JD, Wallace is chronicling her attempt to find a law job there, despite career counselors’ advice to cast a wider net:

I was sitting in a recent career services presentation at my law school–one geared toward 3Ls without jobs–and there was one piece of advice that the presenter kept repeating for emphasis: Don’t limit yourself geographically. The wider your geographic scope, she pointed out, the greater your options.

It’s a great piece of advice.

I’m not going to take it.

Wallace explains that while the worst-case scenario–she can’t find a law job and ends up waiting tables–is unappealing, the best-case scenario is so attractive that she’s willing to take a chance:

But what’s the best case outcome? The best case looks pretty amazing. In the best case scenario, I’m exactly where I want to be, doing exactly the sorts of things I want to be doing.

…

I’m committed to living in the place I’ve chosen. And, after a long day of waiting tables (or whatever the worst-case scenario might be), I’ll turn my face to the sun, soak in the good fortune that I’m in the exact place I want to be, geographically, and buckle down for another day of opportunity searching. I know there’s something there for me, I just have to find it.

My first reaction when I read this is, “Wow, this woman is really limiting herself geographically, and that’s not a good idea in this economy.”

Then I realized that countless people, lawyers and others, operate under this type of geographical constraint when they are trying to find a job. Whether it’s because of money, family concerns, an attachment to one’s hometown or a significant other’s job or schooling, most of us have some limitations when we look for work. The only unusual thing about Wallace’s quest is that she and her husband, as near as I can tell, resolved to move to the Central Coast just because they think it sounds amazing. Good for them.

Maybe career counselors are being unrealistic when they advise law students (and the rest of us) to cast our nets with abandon, allowing ourselves to land wherever we can get someone to match our 401(k) contributions. Work is an important part of life, but it’s not the only part. If that ideal law job is in a city that you think constantly about leaving, it’s not your ideal law job.

So let’s hear it for Janet Wallace for injecting a little real life into the discourse about job searches.

During my days in College Park, I accumulated a pile of free Terps T-shirts that I would wear to football and basketball games. Some may have been a little big, and roughly 5,000 other students would be wearing the exact same shirt, but hey, they were free.

I say this because we all probably did something similarly resourceful while in school to save a few bucks. Two recent stories about law school students have reinforced my point.

First is Julia Neyman, a student at Columbia Law School. Neyman has a blog, the cleverly-titled “Buns of Steal,” in which she chronicles her attempt to work out at health clubs in New York City for an entire year without paying once.

Neyman found gym memberships too expensive upon moving to New York to start law school but soon noticed gyms around the city gave out free passes and coupons. Enter her blog and her goal.

“Most people aren’t cheap enough to do this for a whole year,” she told The New York Daily News. “But I am.”

Next is University of Baltimore School of Law student Burke Miller, who posted an ad on Craigslist seeking tickets to Wednesday night’s Duke-Maryland basketball game in exchange for providing a certain number of billable hours to the seller upon passing the bar.

Miller told The Baltimore Sun one ticket seller contacted him but declined the offer.

“I’m still hopeful,” he said. “I’d sit down with [a seller] and make a contract and look at the standard billable rate for a young attorney. I’ve got full faith that I’d be a good attorney.”

I wish them both the best. (Incidentally, I’d be willing to part with some of my Terps T-shirts for a ticket to the game.)

I mentioned in my story in Wednesday’s paper a letter written by the Board of Visitors at the University of Maryland School of Law concerning former Dean Karen H. Rothenberg and the recent audit of the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Here is the letter in entirety. The board’s chairman, Paul D. Bekman, said the seven judges and one elected official (Sen. Ben Cardin) who are members were ethically precluded from endorsing the letter because of their positions. Otherwise, the letter represents the board’s unanimous position.

I’m not ashamed proud to admit it: I love “Jersey Shore,” the MTV reality show that became a cultural phenomenon.

For the uninitiated, the show followed eight twentysomethings for a month last summer as they lived and worked together on the beach in Seaside Heights, N.J. The Situation, Snooki, battling beats, GTL… the show has captured the cultural Zeitgeist with a pound of hair gel to spare.

Now comes word that one of the show’s stars has taken the LSAT. Vinny Guadagnino, known as simply “Vinny“, said he got a “mediocre” score on the test, which shot his plan of doing really well and enrolling at Yale or Harvard.

Vinny said he would like to practice business or corporate law one day. But right now, he is putting any law dreams he has on hold to ride out his newfound stardom.

“To tell you the truth, man, [being a] lawyer isn’t something I wanted to do,” he said.  “Nobody wants to be a lawyer — it’s hard work. But it was kind of my academic route.”

No matter where Vinny ends up, “Jersey Shore” fans know one thing – Vinny’s mom will love him.

Say hello to the new $107 million John and Frances Angelos Law Center (left), scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2012 and hold its first classes in the spring semester of 2013. The image is looking north from the intersection of Charles Street and Mt. Royal Avenue.

The rendering, plus floor plans and a 3-D model, were displayed three times Thursday – first receiving rave reviews from the state’s Architectural Review Board and Baltimore’s Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel and finally during a community briefing Thursday night at UB’s student center (where I saw it).

Stefan Behnisch, whose German architecture firm is teaming with Baltimore’s Ayers/Saint/Gross Inc. on the project, took community members through the 12-story glass building. The law school will hold 1,100 students and will feature lots of open and public space to promote interaction, as well as an atrium the full height of the building. It will also be LEED certified, although the exact level of environmental friendliness has yet to be determined.

The glass facade will control the amount of sunlight entering the building and will make the building look different to passersby depending on the time of day, Behnisch said.

The building will become the first landmark visible to people leaving Penn Station, Behnisch said, so the goal was to make it both blend in and stand out in the neighborhood.

“I think it defines…the urban fabric,” he said.

Steve Cassard, UB’s vice president for facilities and capital planning, said the project remains on schedule and within the budget.

Sesame Street turns 40 today. I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

(Yes, I know, it was only yesterday you were a kid watching it, where did the time go, etc. etc.)

Big Bird and friends have taught generations of children how to count, share, play nice with others, and, perhaps most importantly, why you gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone.

I tried to see if I could connect Sesame Street with with the law, and I’m not talking about any kind of hidden meaning in Bert and Ernie’s friendship. Turns out the show did it for me, as the following clip clearly demonstrates:

(And, just to save you the trouble of searching, please enjoy “Put Down the Duckie.”)