On the Record

Happy Monday!

• Gregory Kane weighs in on alleged child-killer Dante Parrish, whom the Maryland Innocence Project helped free last year in an unrelated case. In other Parrish news, Peter Hermann’s a got a letter from the teacher of Parrish’s alleged victim. (HT on the letter: Baltimore Crime.)
• John Allen Muhammad’s stand-by lawyer, Baltimore’s J. Wyndal Gordon will write a book about the case.
• Is the Obama administration taking its time on judicial nominees?
• The Lakota Sioux are suing to get authorities to prosecute the guy whose sweat lodge self-help ceremony allegedly killed three people.
• I don’t know, I sorta like this law firm ad.

Marylander Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle weighs in on how lawyers should handle the “specialties” field on LinkedIn. Many state bars, including Maryland’s, have rules forbidding a lawyer from holding him or herself out as a “specialist.” Elefant writes:

Eric Mazzone, North Carolina’s law practice management expert and blogger at Law Practice Matters and the Illinois State Bar Association advise lawyers against filling in the “specialties” box on Linked-In without including some nerdy little caveat like “My state bar does not recognize specializations” or “I am not a certified specialist” BUT I focus on the following.

That’s silly, Elefant continues:

As for me, thanks for the advice, but I’ll politely decline. In my view, filling in a standardized box labeled “specialties” that everyone from college students to seasoned professionals completes as part of their profile does not amount to holding myself out as a specialist given the context. And I’m not inclined to muck up a simple profile with a bunch of legal-ese only because someone up at the bar stretches the meaning of “specialties” beyond any reasonable interpretation.

Unless and until the bar issues a formal ethics opinion or propagates a rule about the specialties box, Elefant will be filling it in without caveats or disclaimers, she says.

Has LinkedIn’s “specialties” field ever given you pause? Did you fill it in? With or without caveats?

Happy Monday!

• An innocent man from Baltimore has been in prison for more than 25 years, writes Dan Rodricks.
• Should jurors get to ask questions at trial?
• Are you an unemployed attorney? Sue your law school!
• New projections say the legal market has stabilized and will grow 3 percent next year.
• This sounds like a distasteful and offensive way to market your legal services, but does it merit sanctions?
• Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick summarizes each Judiciary Committee member’s vote on Sotomayor–in haiku. Awesome.

A law school advertising en masse by way of the air? It sounds both expensive and slightly tacky, but that’s what I thought was the case as I basked in the sun on the Jersey shore this weekend. The beaches were packed like a can of sardines — just imagine all those young, impressionable college students scared they’ll never find their first job. That’s when the banner for Georgian Court University flew back and forth overhead.

It couldn’t be, I thought to myself. Everyone knows law schools are practically turning away admitted students. Christina Doran wrote about the University of Miami law school just last week. But as a Marylander - and a non-lawyer - Georgian Court University sounded like an offshore / online factory, churning out law students by the thousands.

Thankfully, I was wrong by a mile - or 10. Georgian Court University is a women’s college “located only 10 miles from the beautiful Jersey shore,” on a National Historic Landmark site and founded by the Sisters of Mercy of New Jersey.

May the case of the aerial-advertising law school rest in peace.

From Esquire (appropriately enough) comes this list of “Five Lawyer Ads That Make Any Supreme Court Candidate Look Brilliant.” It’s worth a watch if you need a quick laugh. Blogger Steven Yaccino writes:

Since the early ’80s, burnt-out men bordering on middle-aged while somehow maintaining fantastic hair have entertained viewers with cheap stunts, uncreative nicknames, and shameless fear mongering. I’m not talking about the WWE — those stunts are real — but personal-injury and divorce-court lawyers, whose low-budget commercials have escaped the local echo chamber for YouTube immortality (where they will continue to garner zero interest from clients).

I like the first guy best. Does he remind you a little of “Macho Man” Randy Savage?

People may roll their eyes at the lawyer ads that run in our market, but I don’t think any of them approach nearly this level of slea–er, entertainment. Then again, I don’t have cable, so maybe I’m missing something. Readers, are there any Maryland lawyer ads out there that make you cringe or giggle?

HT: Above the Law.

Good afternoon! Here are a few law-related links for your Monday.

• A lawyer who handles automobile lemon claims blogs about the latest lemon-law decision (PDF) from the Court of Special Appeals.

• The governor has “moved at a snail’s pace” in appointing judges to the Court of Appeals, says The Maryland Lawyer Blog.

• Law prof Nancy Polikoff wonders why friends of Janice — of the same-sex custody case (PDF) Janice M. v. Margaret K. — didn’t tell her to stay out of court.

• The Carroll County State’s Attorney’s Office has a therapy pooch. Cute, no?

• Carolyn Elefant at MyShingle posts about a study finding that 76 percent of law firms discount their fees.

• What do you think of this ad campaign by a female-owned firm that uses the lawyers’ gender as a selling point?

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

Everyone needs a gimmick… right?

As an avid listener of DC101’s “Elliott in the Morning” show on my way to work, I’m tempted to try to win a spot on their upcoming trip to Dubai, which they announced this morning. The talk show cast will be taking (an unspecified number of) winners along on a 5-day trip to the United Arab Emirates in March for the Desert Rock Festival.

The requirements to go were a bit surprising to me; beyond being over 21 and having a valid passport, your passport “must not have a stamp from Israel” or you could risk being denied admittance to the country. Has anyone out there heard of that happening?

If you’re a nervous flier or uninterested in traveling to the Middle East, you might fare better in WKLC-FM’s Valentine’s Day giveaway: a free divorce.

Charleston, W.Va.’s Rock 105 will be accepting applications through 4p.m. tomorrow from couples who anticipate a “relatively uncomplicated divorce.” (Apparently, if you’re expecting a long, drawn-out legal battle, this isn’t for you). Charleston attorney Rusty Webb will file the chosen case.

Update: The prize includes 10 free hours of legal services… enough to perform a speedy divorce?

JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor

Photo courtesy of tripadvisor.com

The Wall Street Journal has a great story today on offbeat lawyer advertisements and the ulcers they cause in state bar officials. From the piece:

But the Florida bar isn’t buckling. It filed a complaint in 2004 against Fort Lauderdale personal-injury attorney Marc Andrew Chandler over ads that featured a pit bull wearing a spiked collar. The Florida Supreme Court sided with the bar in 2005, ruling that pit bulls conjure up images of viciousness. “Were we to approve,” the court wrote, “images of sharks, wolves, crocodiles, and piranhas could follow.”

Despite these fears, the bar in 2006 approved the use of panthers, the mascot of Miami firm Panter, Panter & Sampedro PA. At least two other Florida firms have images of lions on their Web sites, so far without censure. That panthers and lions have been tolerated bugged the pit bull lawyer, who asked a bar official how the state could favor vicious cats over pit bulls. “I asked him, ‘What would you rather deal with, a pit bull or a lion?’” Mr. Chandler says, recalling a 2006 telephone call. “There was silence on the other end. I could hear the sound of crickets chirping in the background.”

If the folks in Florida find pit bulls inappropriate, how about bulldogs, like the mascot of our former gov.’s firm? (Womble doesn’t seem to have an office in Florida, which I suppose is good news for Winston.)

Not having cable, I rarely see lawyer ads on TV, so someone’s going to have to fill me in on whether any Maryland attorneys are using potentially vicious animals in their ads.

Also, are there any ads, animal-or-alien-containing or otherwise, that you’d like to see yanked?

What would be the least apropos animal mascot for a law firm? A basket of kittens, because lawyers shouldn’t be cuddly? A python, because no one wants a lawyer to squeeze them for all they’ve got? A possum, because a good lawyer shouldn’t play dead?

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer