Practice of Law

Field Trip to the Maryland Court of Appeals

On May 1, 2013, I will attend and observe the court proceedings of the Maryland Court of Appeals in Annapolis.  There are four cases on the docket: Attorney Grievance Commission v. Dean Clayton Kremer, AGC v. Jason Kobin, a family law, protective order and malicious prosecution case Joanna Anthony v. Peter Garrity and Ocean City, Maryland Chamber of Commerce Inc. v. Daniel J. Barufaldi. a case involving the reversal of a denial of an award of attorney’s fees in a wage payment and collection case.  I will provide a recap of these cases’ arguments shortly after my “busman’s holiday” there.

I have no direct stake in any of the cases, but indirectly all four of the cases might impact me or my clients.  All attorney discipline cases are relevant to every conscientious practitioner.  I do not know of the allegations or dispositions regarding Messrs. Kremer or Kobin, though they presumably each underwent attorney discipline proceedings before a Circuit Court on delegation from the Maryland Court of Appeals.  The family law case addresses among other issues the question of whether a protective order gives “probable cause” as a matter of law to call 911 when the subject of the order is on the street near property from which he is barred.  In this context, “probable cause” refers not to the criminal standard for arrest but for the Maryland malicious prosecution element of lack of probable cause.  I have litigated malicious prosecution claims only once in my career; the Maryland standard is fairly difficult for the plaintiff to meet in practice.

The Barufaldi case has most interest to my practice at least indirectly.  I handle claims under the Maryland Wage Payment and Collection Law routinely including at this moment in several courts.  The threat of attorney’s fees to a prevailing plaintiff is in practice an important motivator for the employer to pay the undisputed claim, along with the serious risk of a triple (or, most precisely for the sake of the pedantic Francophone snob, “treble”)  damages claim.  Arguably one is better off paying any other debt or expense only after paying workers’ wages because very few other debts – even taxes – will explode into a 3x+attorney’s fees nightmare.  The issue of what scope a trial court has to deny an attorney’s fee award is directly on point before the Court of Appeals.  The worker is represented by Philip Zipin, Esquire of Silver Spring; while his firm more often represents workers, I represented a worker against an associate of his in an unemployment hearing about 2 years ago and respected that associate highly for her professionalism and diligence.

The weather should be nice that day, which means that a walking trip down Rowe Boulevard to Chick and Ruth’s Deli on Main Street will probably be in the cards.  Although I have participated in part of an appeal to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, my practice has not involved advocacy before the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.  I was last before the seven Judges in red robes (unique in the United States, it is said) at my swearing-in in December 1994.

Posted by Bruce Godfrey in Godfrey-personal, Practice of Law, 0 comments

Clio (#goclio) did a VERY SMART THING – WELL DONE (no joke).

Clio (www.goclio.com) has been my practice management tool for about 3 years or so.  One of my gripes about Clio for a long time was its escrow ledgers, which until recently militantly included every zero account from every client open and closed going back to the first day I used their software (for clients dormant for three years+.)  Since escrow accounting is in most states and definitely in mine a monthly positive ethical duty, the preparation and cross checking of the report required opening the report, hitting control-A, pasting the mess into an spreadsheet and carving out all of the dead “zero” accounts.

What a pain in the neck – and an unavoidable one.

I had been begging them to change, nagging them.  In an interview with Clio, on this blog, on Twitter.  I thought about sending their office a couple of pizzas in Vancouver and attaching a note asking them to through in the 12-14 (Correction: apparently per below, more like 360+)  lines of code that would be needed to allow for dead/closed/zero-balance accounts to be excluded.

Then, voilá – Clio fixed it, and in a very elegant way.  Well done, gang.  Well done.  Made this last reconcile a whole lot less aggravating and time-consuming.  This is an example of a smart company figuring out how to ratchet its quality up and keep customer loyalty.

Posted by Bruce Godfrey in Practice of Law, 2 comments

The use of honorifics and courtesy titles and forms of address for attorneys

The following is just opinion, not an attempt at “news”.  You can find other crimes here but not the crime of “journalism.”

“Attorney” is the only title, form of address or honorific we need.  There are no ranks of attorneys in U.S. law, no formal distinction between the solicitor and the barrister.  “Doctor” for “Juris Doctor” is arguably misleading in a culture where we do not often note a Ph.D. with the honorific “Doctor”; besides, law school didn’t require a dissertation or its peer-reviewed defense.  “Counselor” is a term of address usually used in formal contexts from the bench to an attorney, often when communicating on a topic more blunt than polite; it is a term of respect but denotes a certain assertiveness and “get to it” direction from the bench.  We address our sisters and brothers in the Bar with the courtesy title of “Esquire” – a term previously used for free gentlemen in England and used today in our republic to denote free, independent professionals of all genders – but we do not use it self-referentially.  We could do without it, but it’s probably helpful for the goal of “civility” in the Bar – you know civility, that vague topic of which your local Bar Association cannot get enough?

I defended a worker at an unemployment hearing where my opponent was an attorney from a visiting jurisdiction who, on a social media page, described herself as [Jane Jones] of the Law Office of [Jane Jones], “Founder and Principal Legal Consultant.”  “Attorney” would have sufficed, if any title or reference was needed at all; attorneys whose names are the same as that on the letterhead in a “Law Office of ___________” are the founders and the “principal legal consultants” per se.  Sort of the same way that “Equal Justice Under Law” could be reduced simply to “Justice”, as I believe the late Professor Paul Fussell once noted.

I have litigated against one attorney who advertised the fact that she or he had a Ph.D. in a field that did not pertain to a law practice area.  For example, one might respect a Ph.D. in, say, geology for an attorney who handles exclusively mineral or oil rights, or a Ph.D. in a field appurtenant to patent work, etc.  But this attorney has a Ph.D., and I don’t know what in, but I remember learning what it was and noting that it doesn’t matter.  The opposing client’s case in a business franchise dispute got hurt badly in a deposition I conducted; Dr. Ph.D. Esquire admitted to my boss on the way out the door, “well your associate put a good hurt on our case.”  While that was nice for me in terms of the all-important brown-nosing at that stage of my career, and my big fat ego, I couldn’t help wondering whether Dr. Ph.D. Esquire’s client signed on the bottom line because she thought that the Ph.D. meant something.  It didn’t.  Not one bit.

Scott Greenfield, Esquire, of Simple Justice handled the tale of prosecutor “Dr. Ph.D. Peter Barone, Esquire” well enough so I won’t rehash what he hashed better than I ever would.  For a prosecutor to go around demanding to be called Doctor?  It’s got “wedgie” written all over it.

“Attorney” means that clients – human beings, in the case of my practice – place their affairs in your hands and judgment and hope that you leave them better than they were, and better than they would have been had they not entrusted you.  The honor comes from the work, the trust.  It needs no perfume, no hype, no puffery, no aristocratic pretense in our republic.  It is probably a greater honor to do without the “honors” in an age of hype in the nation that hype to the planet.

Posted by Bruce Godfrey in Practice of Law, 0 comments

The Latest in “Rakofsky v. Internet” from the Philly Law Blog

Philadelphia attorneys Jordan Rushie and Leo Mulvihill practice in that city’s Fishtown neighborhood and publish the Philly Law Blog.  If you haven’t read their synopsis of the procedural posture of that peculiar method of attorney career suicide that attorney Scott Greenfield of New York named “Rakofsky v. Internet“, go read it.

Rakofsky, even now, could probably salvage his career.  He could withdraw everything and maybe, after a couple years, start over.  Publish a memoir about how idiotic he was when he was young.  But no, he’s going to go down for the career bellyflop, it appears.

Posted by Bruce Godfrey in News, Practice of Law, 2 comments