Commentary

The No. 1 reason lawyers receive ethical complaints is for not communicating with their clients. But while regular and consistent communication may avoid ethical problems, more is needed in order to truly “wow” clients. One of the core values of my firm is to provide clients with the very best client service we can possibly provide. To me, this is of absolute critical importance. We approach this through a variety of ways that focus on one singular objective: consistently showing clients they are valued and appreciated.

In a world where lawyers think their law degrees and Bar membership give them a license to spin conspiracy theories to support claims of a “stolen election” and justify participation in an attempted insurrection, judges must insist and if necessary, enforce the ethical obligation of every lawyer to comply with the applicable “Attorney’s Rules of Professional Conduct.” Every state, as well as the federal courts, have them.

Politicians and athletes often have a tough time letting go of yesterday. In a rare convergence of forced departures and voluntary resignations, the entire top tier of Maryland’s elected officials will be replaced with new faces, little experience in their new roles and total reliance on a continuum of bureaucrats and friendly functionaries who keep the state humming no matter who at the top comes or goes.

In recent pieces, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies, writing for Salon, and Claire Cain Miller, writing for The New York Times, did an excellent job researching the global child care and education picture compared to what we provide here in the United States. Benjamin and Davies provided the data demonstrating that, “In the developed world, the United States is an outlier in its low levels of financial support for young children’s care. The U.S. spends 0.2 percent of its gross domestic product” – the total value of all goods and services produced in the country – “on child care for children 2 years old and under, which amounts to about $200 a year for most families.”

The vaccination numbers out of Montgomery County are so incredible, they sound as if they’re election results from an authoritarian regime. But according to the county itself, they’re real, with 99.9 percent of eligible Montgomery County residents having received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and 90 percent considered “fully vaccinated” with two doses. Our hospitalization numbers reflect this near-universal vaccination, with only 22 new coronavirus-related admissions in the past seven days (as of Oct. 18), a 42 percent decrease from the prior week, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It quite literally does not get much better than Montgomery County when it comes to coronavirus vaccines and hospitalizations.

Nobody asked me, but those attention-seeking politicians who want Maryland’s three westernmost counties to leave the state and become part of West Virginia strike me as ungrateful. One of the first things Larry Hogan did after 884,400 voters across the state made him governor was kill Baltimore’s Red Line and send $61.5 million to Garrett County for roundabouts and road extensions of dubious necessity at the Grantsville exit of Interstate 68. The project turned out to be so much fun to drive, it’s practically a tourist attraction.

The battle against COVID-19 can sometimes seem endless, being fought on so many fronts at the same time. The news is sometimes hopeful and sometimes disappointing, but the fight must go on. We have more than 725,000 reasons — the death toll so far — to keep going. Here in Frederick, our leaders are looking for the next best steps to take. Sometimes that means taking one step forward, one step back, then trying a new direction.

When I was young, everything in society seemed to aim one toward marriage. You would — and should — meet someone, get married and start a family. But even then, the share of people who were married was already falling. The year I was born, 1970, the percentage of Americans between the ages of 25 and 50 who had never married was just 9%. By the time I became an adult, that number was approaching 20%.