On the Record

On the Cover:  Welcome to the first Monday in October! This morning marks the Supreme Court debut of Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and Assistant Public Defender Celia Anderson Davis, who will argue over a Hagerstown man’s child sex abuse conviction. The question is whether a request for counsel, years earlier, should have stopped police from questioning the suspect without a lawyer after they obtained additional information. Read the main story, some advice from Gansler’s predecessor, and a preview of the new term.

In the News: The Court of Appeals heard argument in a legal malpractice case that challenges the “case within a case” methodology … the ban on self-represented lawyers claiming attorneys’ fees applies even to bad faith or frivolous actions, the Court of Special Appeals holds … Maryland Legal Services Corp. renews its quest for a higher filing-fee surcharge … Sen. Ben Cardin finds a civil audience for his health-care talk at UB Law… and a former CBS Early Show personality appeals a ruling that knocked out his medical malpractice claim.

Also:

• Paul Tiburzi remembers the time he argued against the D.C. lawyer who went on to become Chief Justice of the United States;
• An Owings Mills man got a $588,000 verdict in his lawsuit against a home-improvement contracting firm, but will also seek to hold the contractor individually liable;
• Read the Week in Review and our Law Digest, this week with cases from the Court of Appeals, the 4th Circuit and the U.S. District Court for Maryland.

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!

Above the Law is reporting that DLA Piper will be inviting the 2009 summer associates who get job offers to come on board in January of 2011 rather than September of 2010. The firm will be encouraging the current summer associates to defer further, to January 2012.

The 2011 start date is not terribly surprising, given that last year’s crop of summer associates, who just graduated from law school in May, will not be starting until January 2010. It’s hard to imagine any firm in this economy wanting one big group of people to start in January and a second big group to start just eight months later.

The firm’s also going to wait on recruiting summers for 2010. DLA Piper will not do on-campus recruiting until November, after it sees what kind of response it gets from the 2009 summers who get offers. My guess? They’ll get a pretty darn good response, even with the 2011 or 2012 start date. In this law market, if you’re offered a job, any job, you take it. If it’s with one of the biggest firms in the world, so much the better.

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.”

Above the Law has a leaked memo from DLA Piper saying that the firm is cutting first-year associate salaries. DLA Piper confirms. Last year, the firm’s number was $160,000 in larger markets, including Baltimore. Now, the newest incoming associates will make $145,000 instead — when they actually start. Remember that DLA Piper, like many other firms, has delayed first-years’ start dates. Instead of starting work in September 2009, DLA Piper’s new lawyers will not report to work until January 2010, though they will get a stipend in the meantime.

The memo also says the firm will adjust salaries for other associates based on year and performance. The firm says partners, of counsel and senior counsel lawyers have also taken pay cuts.

DLA Piper was the busiest firm in the world on global mergers and acquisitions last year, says a merger intelligence-gathering operation called mergermarket.

The firm advised on more global deals than any other firm in 2008, mergermarket’s report says.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

Happy last-full-workweek-most-of-us-will-have-for-a-few-weeks!

* On Sunday, The Sun had this very sad account of an alleged domestic violence murder.

* At least two other firms are apparently considering pulling a DLA Piper with their non-equity partners, a law prof tells the NLJ.

* Big firm layoffs, both public and “stealth,” are up since the summer, associates tell Above the Law.

* “DNA evidence has been widely embraced over the last two decades as a powerful forensic tool to prove a defendant’s guilt or innocence,” writes the Chicago Tribune. “But in Lake County, authorities have sometimes pressed for convictions even when the DNA doesn’t match a suspect.” HT: How Appealing.

* From the “thanks, Captain Obvious” file comes this advice for 1Ls navigating a troubled economy. Gee whiz, 1Ls should try to get good grades?

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

Hello! Here are some law-related stories and posts to check out today:

For the second year in a row, DLA Piper is the largest law firm in the country.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests isn’t buying Fernando Cristancho’s contention that the woman who gave birth to his triplets concocted sex abuse allegations against Cristancho so she could get custody.

It’s not just Maryland. HT: Baltimore Crime.

Scale back the War on Drugs to save money in these economically trying times, Jon Katz advises the government.

It’s not grounds for a mistrial when a print-out of lawyer jokes called “Sharks and Lawyers: A Comparative Study” is found in the jury room, says the 1st Circuit.

An Obama victory = the end of the Confirmthem blog. “We’ll get back together when a president nominates judges who have a solid record of supporting the rule of law instead of the rule of men, and who understand the grave damage done when judges exercise power without authority,” blogger Andrew Hyman writes.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

DLA Piper gets love from the American Lawyer annual rankings issue today. The magazine points to Piper as one of the few firms for whom a major merger has actually panned out:

The firm has yet to come back down to earth. It has quadruple the number of lawyers of either of its original predecessors. Per-partner profits kept up double-digit growth for five of the last eight years and are up nearly 150 percent since 1999. DLA significantly outpaced The Am Law 100 in average year-on-year growth in revenue per lawyer, profits per partner, and average partner compensation postmerger. And, as the chart shows, the firm grew fast enough in eight years to finally beat the Am Law 100 average in revenue per lawyer in 2007 (it has yet to catch up in profits).

However, the magazine also points out that more than 50 partners have departed the firm since late 2005. I wonder if most of this had to do with lawyers being conflicted out of work that they had always handled, or if there were other major reasons.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog has a post up about the Baltimore lawyer who apparently did “most of the heavy lifting” on the doping-in-baseball Mitchell report.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer