April showers are about to bring May flowers, but a Monday always brings you the blog roundup. Here are some tidbits as you prepare to celebrate Law Day:

-A Georgia lawyer traded pills for a peep show with female prison inmates.

-American Lawyer released its list of highest-grossing firms.

-A Washington, D.C., lawyer reached his goal of swimming in 50 states before he turned 50.

-A Duke University School of Law student tried to get an answer to a question on his Constitutional Law exam by posting it on the Internet.

There was a brief story (ha!) in The Annapolis Capital that caught my attention. Seems a burglar took cash, phones and “more than $650 in high-end bras and panties from a woman’s unlocked apartment Monday,” according to Annapolis police.

The woman had left her apartment unlocked for 10 minutes while taking her daughter to the school bus stop, according to police. When she returned, she “found that a pile of laundry was missing, including $650 worth of Victoria’s Secret bras and panties.”

I’m no expert on women’s underwear, but $650 seems like a lot of money to spend on undergarments. I could probably buy a 20-year supply of underwear for myself for the same amount (or, even better, a 40-year supply if you turn each pair inside-out).

My fiance, who is more well-versed in women’s underwear, said the dollar amount is high, especially since Victoria’s Secret often offers deals.

That’s good news for the robbery victim, who now has a chance to restock her drawers, which I guess is a cotton lining of sorts to all of this.

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.

It’s Monday but look at the bright side: We don’t have snow (as long as you’re not in Garrett County) and we do have the roundup.

– Filmmaking lawyer uses power of deduction to defeat the Internal Revenue Service.

– A lawyer with Magic will be the Los Angeles Dodgers new principal owner.

– Whom would you represent in the case of R2-D2 v. C-3PO?

– Can a non-Jew be the victim of anti-Semitism?

To bill (per hour) or not to bill (per hour)?

That. Is the question.

In today’s shaky economy law firms are talking about (and implementing) alternative payment methods to the traditional billable hour as corporations and other clients are less able to afford the hourly fees.

The Washington Post reports that firms are using flat fees or contingency fees, which is when a firm and its client agree on a price and the firm picks up the difference if it ends up costing more.

A survey of 200 of the country’s biggest firms found 92 percent of firm leaders had used flat fees at least once and 82 percent had used contingency fees, according to The Post.

However, according to the Wall Street Journal, the billable hour is by no means dead among the richest of the rich. The Journal reports that the most expensive lawyers are charging even more per hour, with the top 25 percent of hourly billers charging 4.9 percent more compared to 2010. The average rate is $873 per hour.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, the lowest billers are only charging a 1.3 percent more than last year at an average rate of $204 an hour.

Welcome to Monday. I hope you do not find the day too taxing. Here are a few news items to take into account.

– English litigator in phone-hacking case had working-class upbringing.

– Byrd the bailiff has been Judge Judy’s loyal sidekick since the beginning.

– Texas Supreme Court’s “shifting sands” decision draws criticism.

– Media outlets urge Florida judge to unseal court documents in George Zimmerman case.

Photo courtesy of The Los Angeles Times

I should start by stating that I am not a lawyer, nor do I claim to be well versed in the law. However, something struck me this morning after seeing that the prosecution in the Trayvon Martin case went for a second-degree murder charge against George Zimmerman (right, in a photo distributed by AP).

Legal experts have said that prosecutor Angela Corey will have a tough battle ahead getting a second-degree murder conviction.

Manslaughter, which covers reckless and unintentional killings, would seemingly be the charge more likely to stick based on the accounts of what happened.

Not knowing what evidence the prosecution has or what they are basing their charges on, I won’t speculate on what their specific strategy behind going for those charges might be, but this got me thinking purely hypothetically.

Would it be beyond the prosecution in this case to go for the maximum charge with the hope of NOT getting a conviction?

Sounds crazy, I’m sure – to think a prosecutor would aim to fail.

However, considering the political implications as well as public perception and immense pressure to bring Zimmerman to trial, did the special prosecutor really have the choice not to prosecute Zimmerman?

I understand that it is not uncommon for prosecutors to charge high and settle low. However, let’s just say that a prosecutor believed a killing was truly an accident or an act of self-defense and did not want to press charges at all, yet felt pressured to bring the perpetrator to trial simply because of all of the public scrutiny surrounding the case.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you have a great, big pile of law school debt, Sen. Dick Durbin wants to hear from you.

The Illinois Democrat is collecting stories from real students in his push to pass legislation, called the Know Before You Owe Act of 2012, that will protect students from being tricked into taking high-interest loans from private lenders. Durbin’s bill would require students to receive counseling from schools on signing up for loans and their federal loan eligibility.

But The National Law Journal reports that Durbin has not heard from many law students telling their tales of woe.

According to the American Bar Association, last year law school graduates had between $66,000 and $100,000 in student loan debt. So where are all these law students deep in debt and why so silent?

Other law school students, however, were not so silent in Florida last month. There, two of them helped apprehend an escaped criminal at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

The students were leaving the campus rec center when they spotted a man hiding his hands (and handcuffs) under his shirt. The two called university police. The man, who faced domestic battery and grand theft auto charges, had escaped Gainesville police while switching police cars earlier in the day. Police had been hunting for the man for most of the day and sent out an alert to the university.

The two students received $250 each as a reward. Maybe they can put it toward their loan debt.

Welcome to the final day of the 2012 session of the Maryland General Assembly and the roundup. Here are some items to get this last legislative day started.

– Divorcing couples must find fault in England.

– Russia drops charge in prison death of whistle-blowing attorney.

– Finding an impartial jury will be difficult in Chicago murder trial featuring Jennifer Hudson.

– Pennsylvania judge limits what Sandusky prosecutors, defense attorneys can say to reporters.

A few bank lawyers in Chicago helped achieve a stay of execution for a cat.

The cat was facing a death sentence, a penalty  Connecticut is set to soon abolish (for people), after its owner stipulated in her will that all her surviving feline friends be euthanized “in a painless, peaceful manner” upon her death.

The owner, Georgia Lee Dvorak, 76, died in December and her estate and 20-year-old will were left in the hands of Fifth Third Bank trust officers. The officers took pity on the kitty and went to court Monday asking that the cat, named Boots, be sent to a no-kill animal shelter.

Apparently Boots has had somewhat of a hard-knock life. Dvorak took her in as a stray about 18 months before she died; Boots’ previous owners “threw her down stairs and kept her in a locked closet for days at a time with no food, water or litter box.”

The bank lawyers argued that since most of Dvorak’s $1.4 million estate was going toward animal charities, she was committed to the love of animals and therefore would not want her cat to die.

A Cook County judge agreed to send Boots to happier hunting grounds here on Earth. The cat will go to a shelter which requested a $2,000 endowment to care for the cat — $1,000 will come from Dvorak’s estate and the other half will come from fees Fifth Third Bank agreed to forego.

The name of the shelter Boots will spend the rest of his mouse-chasing days? Cats are Purrsons Too. Apparently, the court could not agree more.