On the Record

By: Danielle Ulman

Welcome back to the roundup on this frigid Monday morning. Here are some law links to peruse while you defrost.

• Is Bernstein biased?
• Copyright and patent litigation cases fell in Maryland last year.
• In a case that circles back to Maryland courts, the owners of the Atlanta Thrashers and the Atlanta Hawks (those are hockey and basketball teams, for the uninitiated) have sued the lawyers who wrote up a “fatally flawed” contract to buy out the interest of one of the team’s owners.
• According to a federal class action lawsuit, those Power Balance bracelets Shaq is promoting are a sham.
• Looks like the FBI may be investigating Baltimore’s towing business.
• Major U.S. law firms laid off 745 people in 2010 — far, far fewer than the year before.
• Communicating with clients is essential for lawyers. So, what to do when your client has multiple disabilities? For one lawyer, the answer has been hiring a certified deaf interpreter.
• Not so fast — that work e-mail you thought was private might be accessible to your employer.
• The Baltimore County Bar Association oral history project is getting underway.

By: Danielle Ulman

It’s Monday again, but for Ravens fans, today comes with a cherry on top: Monday Night Football. Here are some law links to get your day started.

• A weekend news release trumpeted that Billy Murphy would break his silence on the Jessamy-Bernstein race for state’s attorney at a press conference today. Looks like he already spilled the beans.
• Are medical malpractice caps dead? One doc thinks so.
• One American files for bankruptcy every 15 seconds.
• Continuing their summer tour through New York, bedbugs have made their way into the Manhattan DA’s office.
• Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens may have broken the law, but Bill James argues, so did Babe Ruth.
• Laid-off attorney shopping her services as a cleaning woman.
• In South Carolina, having sex with a client’s wife is a conflict of interest.

By: Brendan Kearney

Welcome back to everyone who was out of the office over the holidays, and Happy 2010! A variety of legal news clippings to smooth your way back to working a full week:

• First, 2009 is behind us, and according to numbers compiled by Law Shucks, when it comes to big law firm layoffs, that’s a good thing.
• Now that we’re in 2010, what kind of novel legal thinking can we expect to kick off the decade?
• What about suing your hospital because it wasn’t prepared for a Biblical-scale natural disaster? Now presenting a new litigation product, Medical Malpractice by Katrina! (HT: Overlawyered). Or what about highlighting the possible sociopathy of crime victims?
• Speaking of pathologies, I think John Mesirow at Legal Juice summed it up well when he wrote “it’s not often that an attorney gets busted for doing cocaine, in the courthouse, in the midst of a trial.” Here’s what happened.
• I don’t know who fared worse, the lawyer in the last bullet point (and his client!) or the lawyer who lost his Madoff investment…and then couldn’t share that loss with his ex-wife! (HT: Maryland Divorce Legal Crier).
• In more upbeat news, here’s a well-done and feel-good story about late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s grandson, Peter, a walk-on to the basketball team at Boston College. (As a legal reporter who sometimes wishes he had walked on to his college basketball team, I got a double kick out of this one. HT: How Appealing)

By: Caryn Tamber

Happy Monday!

• The cigarette makers don’t have to keep paying tobacco growers in Maryland.
• John Bratt’s technique would save those who confuse Alito and Scalia on the bench.
• The Supreme Court’s opposition to cameras in the courtroom doesn’t carry a lot of weight when the justices are on TV so much, argues Arlen Specter.
• The 250 biggest law firms in the country suffered the worst headcount decline this year since the National Law Journal began tracking those numbers.
• How will the accused Fort Hood gunman be prosecuted?

By: Caryn Tamber

Happy Monday!

•  To put it mildly, fathers’ rights lawyer Dawn Bowie does not like the recent changes to Maryland’s domestic violence laws.
• “But if I wrote an editorial to the Miami Herald decrying the fact that Obama’s health care plan includes feeding small children to lions, would they publish that too?” Ron Miller sounds off about an anti-health care plan opinion column.
• Former congressman Dick Armey has left DLA Piper over backlash about his work to defeat the Democrats’ health care proposals.
• All together now: correlation does not imply causation! (States with a lot of lawyers also have a lot of cocaine use.)
• Break out the champagne: we went a whole week with no big firm layoffs.
• Don’t leave an employer off your resume!

By: Caryn Tamber

According to AmLaw Daily, Harvard Law School is telling its students to consider widening their summer associate job search. To Baltimore.

Bloomberg, which first reported on the story, quotes assistant dean for career services Mark Weber as follows:

“If you are looking in D.C., consider Baltimore or Richmond,” he said. “If you’re looking in Chicago, try Milwaukee and St. Louis, too. You need to be casting a wider net in this market. “

Really? Baltimore? I can’t speak for Richmond, Milwaukee or St. Louis, but I can say that the Baltimore legal market, while probably in better shape than Washington or New York, is hardly immune to recession-itis. To my knowledge, no firms with a major presence here have yet canceled their 2010 summer programs, but there have certainly been layoffs, and several firms have postponed their 2009 first-year associates’ start dates. Where does Harvard think these developments will leave the would-be summer associate class of 2010? Even if no Baltimore firms call off their 2010 summer programs, how many of their summer associates can reasonably expect a job offer come August 2010?

One thing’s for sure: if students from the second-best law school in the country do listen to their dean’s advice and start taking a closer look at Baltimore, our home-grown law students will face stiff competition this fall in their bid for summer associate positions. I’m not knocking the University of Baltimore or the University of Maryland. But increased competition from anywhere would make it a tougher job market, and increased competition from Harvard students, even more so.

By: Caryn Tamber

Hogan & Hartson has not been having a good week.

Last Friday, word got out that the firm had shown 30 senior associates the door. (I’ve made three calls to the firm since then to find out whether anyone in the Baltimore office was affected, but I haven’t heard back. Take from that what you will.)

Then yesterday, Above the Law posted a Hogan memo announcing that the current summer associates who get job offers in the Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia offices will come on board in the fall of 2011, not 2010. No word yet on Baltimore. (See above re: me not getting called back.) Hogan is not alone on this move, by the way.

It could be worse. This firm has canceled its on-campus recruiting for the fall and its 2010 summer associate program.

By: Barbara Grzincic

Bloomberg News, citing Above The Law, reports that DLA Piper has fired 21 junior lawyers and 100 staff, citing “the worst economic period in generations.”

As we’ve reported in the last few months, the firm let 80 associates and 100 staffers go in February and reduced associate salaries in May. The firm mentioned those moves in a statement Wednesday confirming the latest firings, in which it concluded the light at the end of the tunnel was further than it had thought.

Bloomberg writes:

The firings were not performance-based, and those who lost their jobs will received [sic] severance benefits and outplacement counseling, the firm said in a statement today.

“It is increasingly clear that major improvements in the U.S. and global economy will not occur before 2010,” DLA Piper said in its statement. “While the firm’s financial position remains strong, a tightly-managed cost structure is essential to compete effectively during these uncertain times.”

By: Christina Doran

I’ll admit, what made me click on the link in this blog post was the line:”This reminds me of the brilliant Scooner [sic] Tuna solution at the end of Mr. Mom.”

My love of Mr. Mom aside, I was intrigued when I was directed to LexisNexis’s “Lend a Hand” program Web site. Recently laid-off attorneys — from firms with 50 or more lawyers — can sign up for the program and receive free six-month profiles on Lawyers.com and martindale.com along with six months of free access to Martindale-Hubbell Connected and the Martindale-Hubbell Career Center.

That’s almost as good a deal as receiving fifty cents off your can of tuna.

Hat tip: Above the Law.

By: Caryn Tamber

Happy Monday! Here are a few law links to start your week:

• Prosecutors and judges in Anne Arundel County need to be tough on the robbers who have been plaguing the Arundel Mills Mall and the surrounding areas, Red Maryland says.
• Superlobbyist Bruce Bereano has gotten 22 traffic tickets in the last 13 years, 18 of those for speeding, explaining his vehement stand against the speed camera bill.
• The New York Times had a piece a few days ago on big law firms getting rid of lawyers.
• Law firms are vulnerable to embezzlement, The National Law Journal writes. Featured in the story is Columbia lawyer Michael Nagle, whose firm, Nagle & Zaller, lost $700,000 to a crooked employee.
• Tell your clients: don’t violate bail, especially when there’s a chance someone could post the evidence on Facebook.