Law Students

As University of Maryland law students on the verge of graduation, we could not be prouder of our participation in the law school's clinical program. We are the state's largest public interest law firm, and we try to do great things for people in need. Rather than list all our practice areas, it suffices to say that we handle the types of cases other lawyers might want but cannot afford to take, as well as the ones that others could accept but don't want to touch. Not only do we take tough and sometimes unpopular cases, but we do a fantastic job for our clients.

Rush Limbaugh is the reigning shock jock of conservative political punditry - insults, outrage and outsized bluster are his stock in trade - so it takes quite an uproar for him to apologize. But that's what he has done at least twice now, if unconvincingly, after calling 30-year-old Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" and "prostitute" for testifying to a Congressional panel in favor of the Obama administration's birth control mandate. Last week's personal attack was outrageous, particularly given that Ms. Fluke's testimony was never about her desire to have "recreational sexual activities" as Mr. Limbaugh continued to describe the matter in his on-line apology.

University of Maryland business law students will get more hands-on experience and a taste of the corporate world as part of the school's expanding program. Under the direction of two new co-directors, the law school plans to roll out a revamped business law track by fall 2011, starting with some new courses this fall. Business law is one of eight specialized programs at the school, including environmental law, intellectual property and health care. Co-director Michelle Harner said the university had planned to re-build its business law program even before the recession hit. But the timing — as the job market remains competitive for new attorneys — "does correspond nicely with the increasing needs of students to be more practice-ready," she said.

The O'Malley administration has finally done something in the matter of Mark Farley Grant, the inmate whose plea for clemency - along with an investigative report that established his innocence - went to the Maryland governor 31/2 years ago. Until now, there has been no evidence that eitherMartin O'Malleyor any member of his staff had considered the possibility that Mr. Grant had been convicted wrongly of killing a fellow teenager in Baltimore...

THE NEXT TIME you go into a restaurant, you'll have a good chance of being served by a new breed of starving waiter: the unemployed law student.A local law school career counselor and a recruitment officer at one of Baltimore's largest law firms say opportunities for "summer associates," or interns have dwindled because of the recession.And some law students are complaining that local summer jobs were awarded to blue chip Ivy Leaguers who were chased out of opportunities in their Northeastern cities because of lawyer layoffs.

The morning after Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. was announced as the president's choice for the Supreme Court, students and professors at his alma mater, the Yale Law School, were already hard at work - to defeat him. Professor Bruce Ackerman, who teaches constitutional law here, appeared on CNN with this instant assessment: "I don't think `conservative' is the word. This person is a judicial radical." A group called Law Students Against Alito was formed the same day. "There is a chunk of the population, probably a majority," said Ian Bassin, a founder of the group, "who does not want this guy on the Supreme Court."

In the Gulf Coast region of Mississippi where Hurricane Katrina roared through more than two years ago, frustrated homeowners still struggle. Their plight is again attracting the attention of the University of Maryland School of Law. Nearly 80 law students plan to forgo part of their winter vacation next month and chip in on a variety of legal matters affecting hurricane survivors in Louisiana and Mississippi. "What we've heard is that the immediacy of the problem isn't any less now," said Alicia H. Welch, a third-year law student and coordinator of the project.

Derrick Dunn went to jail recently, charged with driving on a suspended license. Under normal circumstances, he would still be in the Baltimore City Detention Center, trying to figure out how to make bail.But a group of law students from the University of Maryland picked up his case and gave him something that most people accused of crimes in Baltimore and throughout the state rarely receive -- legal advice and representation during bail reviews shortly after they are arrested.Dunn is one of almost a dozen people held on nonserious charges who have been released on bail or on personal recognizance because of the month-old project.

In August, there was just one working phone line at the public defender's office in New Orleans. The broken fax machine sat silent. Even the photocopier stopped copying. It was exactly the kind of post-Hurricane Katrina chaos that attracted the likes of Brigid Ryan. "I jumped at the opportunity even though it was a pretty disturbing experience," said Ryan, a second-year law student at University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore. Inspired by the overwhelming need for legal services for the indigent, Ryan is helping lead a return trip with three dozen students starting Sunday.

I'M AN African-American who is the beneficiary of affirmative action. I find the recent federal court decision ordering the University of Michigan Law School to dismantle its affirmative-action program disturbing. I was able to take advantage of educational opportunities, first by attending Harvard College and Harvard Business School and now the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I know I was qualified for admission at all three institutions, where I and other minority students have done well.

University of Baltimore administrators announced Wednesday that they would boost the law school's base operating budget by $5 million over the next five years. The agreement comes about 21/2 months after the law school's dean resigned, saying that an outsized amount of program funds was being funneled to other parts of the university. The extra $1 million a year would augment the law school's operating budget by about 5 percent, said Robert L. Bogomolny, the university's president, in an interview Wednesday.

July 29, 2011 To the School of Law Community: At a meeting at 4 o'clock on July 28, University President Robert Bogomolny asked for my resignation as Dean of the School of Law. As of today's date, I have resigned my position as Dean. I truly appreciate the support I have received from the faculty, staff, students and alumni of the School of Law. I write this decanal farewell in order to provide a brief explanation of why I am no longer Dean and to express my gratitude to all of you who welcomed me so warmly to Baltimore.

The popular dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law said he was forced to resign this week, and in an unusual move, he used a widely circulated email to air internal tensions over the university's spending of law school revenues to subsidize other programs. Phillip Closius said in a letter to the law school community that he was asked to resign Thursday, the day after the university received an accreditation report from the American Bar Association that raised questions about the administration's rationale for siphoning off large percentages of law school proceeds.

I read with dismay your front page stories "O'Malley signs tuition break" and "Seniors stunned by Md. scholarship cuts" (May 11). Of the scholarship cuts, Gov. Martin O'Malley's spokesperson was quoted as stating that "when we're dealing with the kind of recession we've been dealing with, every program can't be protected. " Yet the governor decided to support a tuition break for illegal immigrants? What kind of message does that send to the 350 law-abiding high school seniors who earned the merit scholarships?

It's a class project that's been under way for about 14 years now — and counting. But perhaps that's the lesson: The wheels of justice do move, just slowly. Students who have taken an access-to-justice clinic at the University of Maryland School of Law over the years did much of the groundwork for a lawsuit won recently in Baltimore Circuit Court. In a decision issued last week, Judge Alfred Nance ruled that criminal defendants have a right to legal representation at hearings in which their bail is determined.

University of Maryland business law students will get more hands-on experience and a taste of the corporate world as part of the school's expanding program. Under the direction of two new co-directors, the law school plans to roll out a revamped business law track by fall 2011, starting with some new courses this fall. Business law is one of eight specialized programs at the school, including environmental law, intellectual property and health care. Co-director Michelle Harner said the university had planned to re-build its business law program even before the recession hit. But the timing — as the job market remains competitive for new attorneys — "does correspond nicely with the increasing needs of students to be more practice-ready," she said.

Fourteen Patterson High School juniors and seniors have blown the whistle on 18 landlords in Northwest Baltimore's Park Heights neighborhood who have not registered their property with the state for lead-paint testing as required for homes built before 1950. The high school students worked on a lead-paint poisoning project with six University of Maryland law students as part of a national youth leadership and advocacy program affiliated with the law school. The students presented their findings Wednesday to university staff and parents at the law school.

If confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagan will bring greater diversity to the court by adding a third woman. What she will not bring is educational diversity. Her confirmation will leave the court entirely composed of former law students at either Harvard or Yale. President Barack Obama's decision to select a nominee from one of these two schools is particularly disappointing as a replacement for Justice John Paul Stevens — an iconic figure on the court who was also its only graduate from an alternative institution (Northwestern)

While the recent op-ed, "The importance of showing up" (Commentary, July 30), rightly emphasizes the link between school attendance and achievement, we are troubled by the authors' emphasis on programs that tend to focus on a "quick fix" rather than those that address the many complex problems that underlie truant behavior. It is critical to develop a continuum of interventions into truancy, ranging from a brief "reminder" telephone call to parents to prosecution in the courts, only as a last resort.

It had never occurred to Michelle Salomon that when she washed her hands, she used more water than some families have access to in a day. The University of Maryland law student had never imagined a world in which constitutional education amounted to one volunteer lecturing under a shade tree to hundreds of people who had never been to school. Salomon, an Olney resident, had long wanted to advocate for human rights. But until she spent last semester at the law school's new clinic in Namibia, she didn't know how desperate and uplifting that struggle could be. "It transformed my life," she says.