New Baltimore City State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein made his courtroom debut during a week packed with high-profile legal news. Here are the five most-read stories by The Daily Record’s legal affairs reporting team.

1. Nordstrom found negligent in 2005 knife attack – by Danny Jacobs
A Montgomery County jury has awarded nearly $1.6 million to two women who were stabbed while shopping at a Nordstrom almost six years ago.

2. Bernstein opens trial of Baltimore officers accused of kidnapping – by Danny Jacobs
Gregg Bernstein introduced himself to jurors Wednesday as the Baltimore City state’s attorney. Then he introduced the three police officers accused of kidnapping and abandoning two Baltimore teenagers, pointing to each one for emphasis.

3. Divorce, punishment and protest bills pass – by Steve Lash
The General Assembly ended its 2011 session last week having passed legislation pertaining to parting, punishment and protest.

4. U.S. ordered to reveal identities of Currie’s unindicted co-conspirators – by Steve Lash
Federal prosecutors must hand over the names of state Sen. Ulysses S. Currie’s unindicted co-conspirators to the defense team in his bribery case, a judge said Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

5. Opponents file new lawsuit against Superblock plan – by Danny Jacobs
Opponents of the proposed Superblock redevelopment have filed another lawsuit to stop the project, this time alleging approved demolition plans would violate a historic preservation agreement.

It seems students at the University of Maryland School of Law have already gotten a great present this holiday season: no tuition increase next year. This despite other schools within the University of Maryland, Baltimore seeing an average tuition increase of 4 percent for the 2011-2012 year.

UPDATE 12/17/10: A UMB spokesman reminded me that a tuition freeze does not happen just because the law school announces it. Tuition rates have to be approved by the Board of Regents, a vote that follows the General Assembly’s approval of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s budget.

In a memo to all UMB students about tuition and fees, published yesterday at Above the Law, President Jay Perman said the one-year freeze at the law schools was made “due to unique and striking changes in the economic environment for the legal profession.”

Law school Dean Phoebe Haddon, in a subsequent memo to law students also in ATL, elaborated:

Holding tuition at the current level in the upcoming academic year has been a top priority for me. The impact of the economic downturn on the legal employment market, combined with the large amount of debt many of you carry, has caused the faculty and administrators of the Law School great concern. Relative to the other professions, the legal sector has been especially hard hit, with tens of thousands of law jobs lost. Many of us also believe that this downturn is resulting in a fundamental restructuring of law practice that will require careful financial planning for all of us going forward.

Haddon added that the law school will make-up its shortfall to UMB by dipping into its short-term savings.

“I have been actively meeting with supportive alumni, friends and foundations seeking financial support so that the fund balance will be replenished,” Haddon wrote.

Calling UM Law alumni: Does the tuition freeze make you more likely to donate to your alma mater? Less likely? Or does it not affect your decision at all?

We’ve written about the tough legal job market for law school students, and the dean at UB Law recently told us he anticipates the number of law schools in the country will shrink in the years to come.

This apparently has not deterred administrators at the University of Delaware, which will study the possibility of opening a law school in Newark in the fall of 2015. The law school would be the second one in the state (after Widener) but the only public one.

Above the Law is skeptical of UD’s venture:

You see, the rationale for this new law school is that it’ll make the University of Delaware look good to have a law school. It has nothing to do with legal education or professional services. Sure, some will say that because of Delaware’s unique role in corporate governance, a state law school makes sense. But that’s not why they’re doing it. The corporate law stuff will be an add-on tagline some marketer weaves in as the school fights for funding and public recognition. It’s not going to be a core value of the new school. From the very start, the president is telling you what the core values will be: taking the University of Delaware to “the next rank” of American higher education — a “rank” that will decided by U.S. News, no doubt.

Any Delaware alums out there want to chime in? Also, do you think this new law school have any impact on Maryland’s two law schools?

Before today, I had never heard of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi nor his fantastic facial hair. It turns out in 1923 he made a bronze scuplture, “Bird in Space,” that he shipped to the United States in 1927. Customs officials levied a $4,000 tax on it upon arrival because it was, in their view, a hunk of metal. Brancusi said it was art, which was not taxed at all. He took his case to court and won in 1928, his money refunded.

I learned all this thanks to the winner of video contest sponsored by Maryland Lawyers for the Arts in honor of the organization’s 25th birthday.

The three local filmmakers–David Sloan, Thea Canlas and Matthew Hickey–swept the $500 grand prize and $250 audience award. You can see the video below – its title, “Left-Brained People Helping Right-Brained People,” is a riff on MLA’s motto. The short also alludes to other, famous artistic legal battles, including the fair use case of Rogers v. Koons.

“We were initially a little worried that our idea would incite the wrath of two groups that tend to take themselves very seriously—artists and lawyers—but it is that very seriousness that makes the piece work as a parody,” Sloan said, according to a press release from MLA.

Juan Williams made the headlines last week speaking at Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service’s pro bono reception. But almost all of what Williams said about the NPR controversy was to reporters after he gave a keynote address that looked at the value of pro bono work through the story of Thurgood Marshall, which Williams himself has told.

Williams talked in his speech about the influence of Charles Hamilton Houston, Marshall’s dean at Howard University’s law school who became a mentor and friend. Two of Houston’s sayings became mantras of sorts for Marshall as he pursued the civil rights cases that made him a household name:

• All people need good lawyers when their lives are on the line.
• A lawyer who is not a social architect is nothing but a social parasite.

Karl-Henri Gauvin was honored by MVLS as its volunteer of the year. Gauvin, a Baltimore solo practitioner, has handled 44 pro bono cases since 2008, primarily foreclosures. That Gauvin has so many foreclosure cases to work on in the first place is why he called the honor a “mixed blessing.” But Gauvin described the pro bono cases as a natural extension of his public policy background.

“Once you get your hands dirty, it’s very rewarding,” he said.

Connie Hare and Gary Greenblatt often see the rewards from pro bono cases more clearly than from their regular cases. The husband and wife team, of Mehlman, Greenblatt & Hare LLC in Baltimore, were honored as law firm of the year for taking 15 bankruptcy cases from MVLS this year and 58 total since 1993.

The couple has seen the impact of helping a pro bono client get rid of creditors and end up in a better place financially and mentally.

“They have hope now,” Hare said.

Both described the work as an obligation and “the least you can do” to give back.

MVLS also honored three lawyers – Thomas R. Simpson Jr., Elva E. Tillman and Randy S. Wase – for taking at least one pro bono case in each of the last 10 years.

(Full disclosure: The Daily Record was a media sponsor for the event.)

I wrote last week about the defamation lawsuit Rick Reinhardt filed Julie Ensor, his rival for clerk of the Baltimore County Circuit Court. The article prompted some online discussion, and the big question was one my editor posed when I initially told her about the story: Can a person be sued for defamation based on something he or she tells a police officer?

The short answer – yes. A divided Court of Appeals ruled in 1993 that statements to police are not afforded absolute privilege, meaning they are not immune from defamation lawsuits. (The case is Caldor v. Bowden if you’re scoring at home.)

Robin Leone, a media law lawyer with Saul Ewing LLP in Baltimore, said Reinhardt’s bigger challenge will be proving he was defamed. (Full disclosure: Leone has represented The Daily Record in a First Amendment matter.) Reinhardt has to show Ensor’s statement was false and that she intended to harm him when talking to police.

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Last week, I read an Above the Law post that really got my blood boiling. A North Carolina man was sentenced to just 120 days in prison after he shot a bicyclist in the head during a roadside confrontation — in front of the rider’s three-year-old daughter.

The ATL blog referred readers to the full Alt Transport article, aptly titled, “Want to Get Away With Murder? Just Run Over A Bicyclist.” Using the North Carolina case, along with a couple unaddressed hit-and-runs, to illustrate his point, the author argued for nationwide laws to command justice for cyclists and other “vulnerable road users” who are injured or killed by motorists.

Fast forward to one week later: A Howard County man who hit and killed a teenage boy last August pled guilty Tuesday to driving while impaired during the incident. Police said he had heroin in his pocket and failed a field sobriety test after he struck the cyclist. The punishment for taking a child from his family? Six months in the clink.

I am sick to death of motorists getting a slap on the wrist when they significantly and fundamentally alter the lives of cyclists — and the lives of their surviving family members. In the Howard County case, their son’s death caused both parents to lose their jobs, leading to foreclosure and, for the mother, a personal bankruptcy filing, according to The Baltimore Sun.

It’s not as if this sort of tragedy is an anomaly. In fact, accidents involving bicycles have become so commonplace that one D.C. website reports the number of cyclists struck each week in the district. There were six — reported — just last week. Anecdotally, having had the conversation with bike commuters in various cities, I have not personally spoken to anyone who rides more than recreationally and has not been hit or at least clipped by a vehicle.

I don’t mean to vilify all drivers. Yes, there are plenty of motorists out there who give cyclists a wide berth on the road, just like there are plenty of bike riders who wait at every stop light and plenty of pedestrians who never jaywalk. But the next time you’re barreling down the street in a two-ton piece of metal and come upon a cyclist, remember that you’re sharing the road with someone who, unlike you, doesn’t have the added protection of a steel exoskeleton.

U.S. News & World Report’s Best Law Firms list is out, and with the way it took shape, it got me wondering: Is it better to make the list but land in the third tier, or not make it at all?

The much-anticipated rankings break down the top firms by 81 practice areas, but instead of numerically ranking them, U.S. News tiered firms nationally and in metropolitan areas. Potential clients can search for a firm based on location and practice area.

The tiered structure makes the list much more inclusive than a typical top 100 list ever could, and it allows firms that land in the top tier to call themselves just that — tops at what they do, rather than, say, a quarter of the way down the list.

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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?

One voice we could not fit into today’s story about the changes to the state’s foreclosure law was that of the Foreclosure Prevention Pro Bono Project.

Since its inception two years ago, the project has placed more than 900 cases with volunteer lawyers across the state. More than 1,500 homeowners also have been advised through foreclosure solution workshops staffed by volunteer attorneys.

Jennifer Larrabee, manager of the project with the Pro Bono Resource Center of Maryland, said officials are still trying to determine how, if at all, its system will change under the new law. The workshops will continue, she said, but one possible alteration might be volunteer lawyers shifting their focus toward representing clients in mediation sessions, she said.

Larrabee supports the new law but said it does not lessen the need for volunteer lawyers.

“The intention behind the law is that homeowners be provided a face-to-face, meaningful opportunity to meet with the lender and negotiate with someone with decision-making authority,” she said.