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.

A month and a half ago I wrote about the addition of a young but high-profile lawyer to the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s office, Leo J. Wise.

When U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein told me Wise, who policed Congressional ethics for the past couple of years, would prosecute white-collar crime as an AUSA, the bribery case against state Sen. Ulysses Currie (D-Prince George’s) and a pair of Shoppers Food executives immediately came to mind.

Well, Wise entered his appearance in Maryland’s federal court for the first time this week, and, sure enough, one of the two (sets of) cases on his personal docket is the Currie-Shoppers prosecution.

Presumably, no one will disassemble the U.S. Attorney’s office (as certain members of Congress reportedly have suggested re: the OCE) before trial in the case next summer…

Of course, Rosenstein’s office’s other major political corruption prosecution (and ongoing investigation) also involves Prince George’s County, and there was attorney news in that cluster of cases, too, this week.

In case you’ve been asleep for the past month, County Executive Jack B. Johnson and his wife, Leslie, were arrested Nov. 12 after the FBI overheard the couple scrambling to hide nearly $80,000 in cash and a check for $100,000 in, um, various places.

Prominent defense attorney William R. “Billy” Martin, who has defended people like Michael Vick and the mayor of Atlanta, seemed an appropriate person to represent Jack Johnson, but few had heard of Leslie Johnson’s counsel, Owings Mills attorney Roland N. Patterson Jr.

Apparently the county councilwoman-elect decided she needed a little more heft to protect her from federal prosecutors because this week a big-firm attorney, whose office is in the Watergate building no less, entered her appearance on behalf of Mrs. Johnson. Perhaps not coincidentally, Shawn M. Wright is a partner at Martin’s old firm, Blank Rome LLP.

So, dear readers, do you think these these personnel moves will significantly impact the evolution and outcome of these cases or were these politicos’ looking at jail time regardless of any clever attorney’s maneuvering?

Alaska Elections Division Director Gail Fenumiai, right, and Assistant Attorney General Sarah Felix look over a ballot Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010, in Juneau, Alaska.

Maybe it’s the journalist in me, but I have a low tolerance for spelling mistakes. Sure, we all make the occaisional mistake, but between dictionaries and spell check on computers, the errors should be few and far between.

I’m especially paranoid about when it comes to spelling people’s names. I had the fear of God put into me in college, where a misspelled proper name in a journalism class meant an “F” on the assignment, no questions asked. Plus, my story might be the only time a person’s name appears in the paper, so it’s the least I can do to make sure John Smith doesn’t spell his name “Jon Smythe.”

This brings me to Alaska’s contested U.S. Senate race. For those not familiar, incumbent Lisa Murkowski was defeated in the Republican primary by Tea Party favorite Joe Miller. Murkowski then decided to run as an independent, write-in candidate; as of Wednesday night, “Write-In Votes” leads Miller by more than 10,000 votes.

This is where the fun begins. Alaska election officials are now reviewing all of the write-in ballots, with Murkowski named in almost 90 percent of them as of Friday morning. “Murkowski” might become the “hanging chad” of the 2010 election season. So far, officials have seen “Murkowsky,” “Morkowski,” “Mirkowsky,” “Murkrowsky,” and “Marcouski” despite the candidate’s general election campaign devoted in large part to the spelling of her surname.

Personally, I think if you can’t spell correctly the name of a longtime Alaskan legislator who is also the daughter of a longtime Alaskan legislator, you need to pay more attention to current events. But my point is, expect lawsuits aplenty over the ballots and voter rolls in addition to the challenges already being made.

And, remember, should we get to this point, there is no hyphen in “recount.”

… Because they sure didn’t vote at lunch time.

“As of the 1 o’clock numbers, we had 6 percent of the voters coming out, which is 22,660,” Abigail Jones, administrative officer at Baltimore City Board of Elections, told reporter Brendan Kearney.

Jones said the turnout was “scattered” and wasn’t heavy in any particular part of Baltimore.

“It’s quiet all over the city,” Jones said. She attributed the low turnout to both the lack of a presidential contest and the number of incumbents running unopposed this year.

Checking back at 3 o’clock, we found turnout had risen –  to 8 percent.

Meanwhile, Brendan continues to cover the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s race. Look for his updates on The Daily Record’s website tonight.

I blogged last month about The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s “copyright enforcement partner,” who sues websites and bloggers that post the newspaper’s stories in their entirety, rather than just the links.

The Review-Journal’s strategy raised a whole bunch of legal questions. Now, it might raise some ethical questions because of one of its newest defendants: Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle, who is challenging Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in one of the most hotly-contested and closely-watched elections of the fall.

Vegas-based blogger Steve Friess raised the ethical questions last week:

- [M]ust Nevada’s largest paper now include a passage in every news story it does on Angle’s race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledging that its owners have sued her?

- Can the R-J, whose publisher and editor have been outspoken supporters of the Tea Party darling, actually endorse her for Senate after having publicly accused her of stealing from them?

The Review-Journal alleges Angle posted two stories on her website without the newspaper’s permission. As of Tuesday, her website only had a paragraph from a story followed by a link, but that wasn’t always the case, as Friess has documented.

“[T]he Review-Journal has placed itself in journalistically uncharted territory,” Friess wrote Saturday. “No political or media experts I contacted could recall a mainstream newspaper ever suing a major-party candidate in the heat of a hotly contested election campaign.”

Something to watch as the general election nears.

(Speaking of elections, did you, Maryland Voter, cast your ballot in today’s primary election? You’ve got until 8 p.m.)

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler might soon be getting a call from Gov. Martin O’Malley, if he hasn’t already received one, seeking a campaign donation.

The governor, in his solicitation, might raise the following points:

• Gansler is running unopposed for re-election; O’Malley is not.

• Gansler has campaign money he need not spend on himself; O’Malley does not.

• Gansler might want to run for governor in four years; O’Malley cannot if he wins re-election this fall against Republican challenger Robert Ehrlich and is term-limited out of office.

• Gansler, if he plans a gubernatorial run, thus has a rooting interest in O’Malley’s victory this fall, as it is easier to win an open seat than one occupied by an incumbent (O’Malley’s win over then-Gov. Ehrlich in 2006 being an exception).

But cheers of “Go, Martin, Go” do not win re-election fights. Money does — and Gansler has plenty to spare.

The attorney general might also want to spread the wealth. Donating to many Democrats in tight races this fall could be an investment that pays dividends for Gansler in 2014 when he might seek gubernatorial-campaign support.

From a man at work who enjoys Men at Work, here now some news tidbits from Australia.

• The headline says it all: “Ninja students foil Aussie mugging.” Three blokes in the middle of beating a man for his iPod and cell phone fled the scene of the crime when “five black-clad ninjas” came to the rescue. The ninjitsu students were training at a nearby hall when one saw the mugging in progress. Two of the men have been arrested.
• People entering Australia must now declare at customs if they are carrying pornography. An affirmative declaration allows customs officials to search the luggage to determine if the material is legal. The move has drawn protest as an invasion of privacy by the Australian Sex Party, which notes there is no formal definition of pornography on the customs form.

Now, if you’re like me, your first thought about the second story was, “Australian Sex Party? Really?” At the risk of getting fired, I performed a quick Internet search which indicates that it does in fact exist.

G’day to everyone.

Many news junkies will be keeping an eye on Afghanistan’s national elections Thursday, but for Mike Smith, it’s different.

Smith, a Gordon Feinblatt employment lawyer, has met three of the major candidates–incumbent Hamid Karzai and challengers Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah–and counts Ghani as a close friend. As I wrote last year, Smith has done a lot of pro bono work on Afghanistan issues, including working with a group proposing a new labor and employment code for the country, working to get the post-invasion Afghan government dismissed from a lawsuit filed by families of 9/11 attack victims and aimed at the pre-invasion Taliban government, representing Afghan Guantánamo Bay detainees and arranging a partnership between Kabul University and his alma mater, Colgate University.

Smith is rooting for long-shot Ghani, a former finance minister in Afghanistan, to win the election.

“I think he’s what the doctor [ordered] for Afghanistan, frankly, but people vote the way they vote,” Smith said.

Smith said there were high hopes for Karzai when he took office in 2004. He surrounded himself with competent, honest people. But over the past five years, many of those people have left, and Karzai has tolerated an extraordinary amount of corruption. Karzai is still seen as the front-runner in the election.

Smith said he believes Karzai’s support comes from four camps: people who believe in Karzai, those who have benefitted from the corruption in his administration, those who are following their local warlord’s voting instructions and those practicing “aggressive apathy” by sticking with the status quo.

The American-educated Ghani would focus on ending corruption, training Afghan troops and decreasing unemployment, on the theory that young men are joining the Taliban fighters not for ideological reasons but because it’s a paying job, Smith said.Smith said Abdullah, a former foreign minister, would be a decent second choice if Ghani does not win. Abdullah is expected toget the second-highest number of votes.

“I think Abdullah Abdullah would not be a horrific choice,” he said.

Media outlets have reported that even if, as expected, Karzai gets more votes than any other candidate, he may not win the more than 50 percent necessary to avoid a runoff election with his closest challenger. That, Smith guessed, is Karzai’s worst nightmare.

It is possible that even if Karzai wins reelection, he will appoint Ghani as a sort of chief executive.

In nearly every social setting I found myself in this past holiday weekend, the latest in The Continuing Story of Alaska Sarah came up, and the theories of why she abruptly quit as governor were as various as they were numerous. Here’s one the legal community can understand: her legal bills forced her hand. (And speaking of, er, atypical Alaskans, I wonder what this judge has to say about Palin’s resignation.)

How bad have law firm layoffs been this year? Here’s the latest on the recent rash of retrenchments. (HT: Above The Law)

Have you heard about The Chicago Tribune’s series of stories examining the controversial admissions practices at the University of Illinois? Well there’s now controversy about the newspaper’s coverage, too, and a group of law professors at the University want everyone to know their school isn’t unique. (Hat tip: ABA Journal, et al.) Are they right?

Leah Ward Sears, the just-retired Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court — and a one-time candidate to become dean of the University of Maryland School of Law — sounded off last week on no-fault divorces. (Hat tip: Maryland Family Law Blog)

Finally, everybody has word-choice pet peeves, and one of mine is the use of ‘verbal‘. As that word comes from the Latin for ‘word,’ I think it should be used in contrast to ‘numerical’ or ‘gestural’ when manner of expression is the subject at issue. But instead, ‘verbal’ is often used in contrast to ‘written’, which while legitimate according to lower-listed dictionary definitions, I think should be subbed out for ‘vocal‘. (By the way, this mini tirade — wait, can you have a typed tirade? — was triggered by today’s “Say What?!“). What do you think?

Del. Norman H. Conway, D-Wicomico and Worcester, readily admits he was the lawmaker who added language to the state’s budget requiring the Maryland Disability Law Center to submit financial documents before receiving funding. (The funding was untied from the reporting requirement in the final version of the budget passed by the General Assembly.)

MDLC was the only legal services organization targeted, raising alarms in the legal services community. Conway, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said MDLC was selected because he had not seen an audit from the organization recently. (Virginia Knowlton, MDLC’s executive director, has noted that her organization undergoes financial audits at both state and federal levels to receive grant money, and Conway has access to those.)

Conway also points out that the documentation requirement is not uncommon. ”Throughout the budget, you’ll see all types of reports that are requested from a list of organizations and state agencies,” he said.

Scanning through the budget (PDF), I discovered more than a dozen similar documentation requirements. The Maryland Higher Education Commission and the state’s historically black institutions, for example, have to submit a report showing the effectiveness of programs to increase graduation and retention rates before receiving $1.5 million for that purpose. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is asked to submit a report on the “proposed closing of state-operated beds” at the Walter P. Carter in Baltimore City before receiving $10 million. And the Maryland Insurance Administration is to report on “an agreed upon practice for forecasting and tracking the premium tax” before receiving $100,000.

An analyst with the Department of Legislative Services confirmed the frequent use of documentation requirements for funding, and said the unusual thing here is that MDLC succeeded in getting them untied .

Conway indicated that the selected organizations are not being accused of or being investigated for wrongdoing. Rather, it’s a way for the legislators to make sure state funds are being used appropriately, particularly in the current economic climate.

“I like to focus on what the activities are,” he said. “The committee needs to understand these different expenditures.”

Whatever Conway’s motives, MDLC and other legal services agencies see it as a shot across their bow, according to this commentary by Legal Aid’s Joe Surkiewicz. What do you think?