Twenty and Change

Fewer trials. Body cams. Same-sex marriage. Virtual hearings. Work-life balance. Electronic filings. Artificial intelligence. The Trump administration. And the “tunnel man.”

A lot has happened in the past 20 years that affected law and its practice. We talked to five attorneys about their experiences, and asked them to predict what the future may hold.

Path to the Law

Michael J. Baxter, Baxter, Baker, Sidle, Conn & Jones; Personal Injury – Medical Malpractice: Defense; Baltimore: Not knowing what direction I wanted to go professionally, law seemed to give the opportunity to impact different parts of society, whether the justice system, politics, or business. I knew that if I was going to be half good at anything, it was going to be trial work. It’s a personality-driven specialization. I thought it’d be fun, challenging, and not boring. 

Robert C. Bonsib, MarcusBonsib; Criminal Defense; Greenbelt: It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I thought that I might want to go to law school. I was a history major, which had no future other than to teach. After I got into law school, I developed an interest in criminal law by reading biographies of famous trial lawyers.

Cynthia L. Leppert, Law Office of Cynthia Leppert; Business Litigation; Towson: After college, I received a fellowship to study economics in the graduate school at UCLA. While I was there, I sat in on a couple of law school classes. I was intrigued by the issues being discussed. I remember telling my mom, who did not have the opportunity to go to college, about it. She said if I went to law school, the world would be my oyster. I’m a child of the ’60s and ’70s, and I, like many of my generation, wanted to change the world. I thought law could do that.  

Jonathan S. Beiser, Beiser Law Firm; Workers’ Compensation; North Bethesda: When I was in high school, my grandmother passed away. My cousin came over: Marty Gerel from Ashcraft & Gerel. I told Marty I was interested in possibly learning about the law and he invited me to intern. I then went to University of Maryland, and Marty invited me back again. I came back in the summer as a gopher and worked part-time through college. After I passed the bar, I was hired there and stayed for 26 years. 

Mary Roby Sanders, Turnbull, Nicholson & Sanders; Family Law; Towson: From middle school, I wanted to be a lawyer. Then I remember graduating from college and thinking, ‘Oh, I’m done.’ I went to work in management consulting. I did that for three years and then I went to law school. I started working for Ann Turnbull in 1986 as a law clerk. She was the first female partner at a big firm in Maryland, one of the founders of family law case law in our state. I have a business degree and an economics degree, and thought I wanted to be a business lawyer, but once I got associated with Ann, I loved family law.

Highlight-Reel Cases

Leppert: I was representing a Chapter 7 trustee in a bankruptcy case that involved a real estate broker’s claim for commission on a $19 million warehouse. I tried the case in the United States Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore and I won after a five-day trial. It was appealed to the U.S. District Court, and I won. And then it was appealed to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and I won again. This was the first case I ever argued in the 4th Circuit. I walked into the courthouse and I went to the clerk’s office to check in. Even though there were about 15 cases being argued that day, as soon as the clerk came to the counter, she asked if I was Ms. Leppert. I said, ‘How did you know?’ And she said, ‘You’re the only woman arguing today.’ I don’t know if that spurred me on to win, but in fact I did win.

Bonsib: The “tunnel man” case. A brilliant but very eccentric man had all these tunnels built under his home. The house itself, where he lived with his parents, was the classic hoarder house—nightmare stuff. He was building tunnels under the home as a sort of bunker. At one point, he hired other young men to help him dig. There was an electrical fire in the basement above where the tunnels were, and a young man he hired ended up dying. The case made world news because it was so unusual, not only notable because of its unusual facts, but due to our client, who had made himself a multimillionaire as a day trader. This guy had an incredible analytical mind and was very unusual. He was originally convicted of second-degree murder. … But it was reviewed by the Maryland Supreme Court, who reversed the second-degree murder conviction and affirmed the involuntary manslaughter conviction. And he served, ultimately, five years.

Baxter: I had a case in the Maryland Court of Appeals, which is now our Supreme Court, which defined a lot of what would become the law of peer review immunity in health care litigation. I do malpractice, I do credentialing, I do disciplinary matters for health care providers, so to have my name on that opinion with other lawyers gave me a really good feeling. 

Biggest Shifts

Sanders: Same-sex marriages. Where that comes into play for my clients is one parent is usually the biological parent and the other parent isn’t. How does that affect custody? How does that affect access when both parents have been intimately involved with the raising of the child?

Another I’ve seen is an increase in pro se litigants. That’s huge in the court system right now, probably for the last decade. People are representing themselves, I think because they watch TV shows and think they know how to be a lawyer. I mean, you can Google, “How do I represent myself in court?”

Baxter: The disappearing trial. I’m a member of a group that advocates for the preservation of jury trials. It’s not like somebody evil has gone out and said, “We’re not going to have as many trials.” It’s just that litigation has become much more complicated in terms of discovery and pretrial activities. There’s a much more organized push on settlement and resolution and motion resolution in federal court. 

The way we learned in the past, there were little trials that either we handled or we went with somebody else and watched, much like a medical residency. That learning opportunity is not what it used to be. It’s harder to get into court, and therefore it’s harder for a brand new lawyer to learn how to do it. I think it scares some lawyers off. They don’t want to be discovery lawyers. They want to be trial lawyers. 

For my practice area, there’s also been a dynamic shift in health care where physicians are migrating to become employees of health care systems. Twenty years ago, there were more small physician groups or solo practitioners who did not want to be employees of hospitals. That’s changed.

Beiser: The last 15 years or so, I’ve been doing more and more Longshore and Defense Base Act workers’ comp. That’s federal, so I’m dealing with the Department of Labor, the Office of Administrative Law Judges. The new administration has greatly affected our practice. In the Defense Base Act practice area, there’s been a huge influx of cases since Afghanistan closed. I represent claimants that work for defense contractors overseas—in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Africa, all over at different bases and embassies. Over the last four years, the number of cases has more than tripled, yet the number of judges has gone from 42 to 31, only 18 of which do Longshore and Defense Base Act work. We now have 12,000 cases pending for basically 18 judges because of DOGE cuts. A lot of institutional knowledge is gone. It’s overwhelmingly changed our practice. It’s the single most disruptive thing I’ve faced in 20 years.

Bonsib: The impact of the digital world, both in terms of how cases are put together and also the need to stay current on how to use electronic or digital evidence. It used to be a DUI with an arresting officer, maybe a secondary officer who shows up, and they fill out a six- or eight-page report, and you get a Breathalyzer. Now if it’s at 2 o’clock in the morning and nobody else is doing anything, you’ve got eight cops showing up. You’ve got hours of body cam footage you have to look through, and most of it is duplicative, but you can’t overlook anything. It’s very time consuming. Or we get forensic downloads of cellphones that contain 10, 15, 20 years of a person’s personal history. The ability to have the time and a person who can sit in an office and go through this stuff for three to five days is critical now. It makes being a smaller firm or solo practitioner quite difficult.  

Leppert: A loss of mentorship, which I associate with COVID. When the world became virtual, the opportunities that the bar associations gave for lawyers coming together, learning from each other, being supportive, just weren’t the same. I’m a great fan of bar associations, and am really involved in them. So, for me, the loss was unfortunate. They’re coming back, but I hear from young lawyers that they felt they were not getting the kind of mentorship other lawyers had. In my view, it is good for lawyers to be in a community with one another, whether it be the workplace or through bar associations where they can share stories, ideas, and struggles.

Technically Speaking

Sanders: AI is going to change the landscape of law. Not just AI, but technology, period. Maryland has adopted electronic court filings only. That started in the middle of COVID. It’s a wonderful thing. Electronically stored information impacts my work, too. If I’m working with a business and I want their data, I want source data so I can see if they’re changing anything. There’ve been cases where people have changed their Quicken program to get rid of checks written to other people. ESI is a big deal.

Beiser: I am old school. I like files. I like paper. But I’ve been learning how to work remotely and I’ve got a new case-management system that offers AI. The AI stuff still scares me. We do follow-up and review the cases that come up to make sure that cases are real and what they say they are. One of the benefits that we’re finding with AI is more with medical records. In workers’ comp, you’re dealing with medical records all the time, and with our new AI software, it scans all the records and, boom, it gives you a quick little summary. That should make our practice easier in terms of brief writing, motions and hearings. 

Leppert: I feel like AI has been slower to be adopted in the legal industry than it has in certain others. The legal industry often tends to be a little behind with respect to technology, but also, law is a regulated industry. We are subject to the rules of professional conduct and various ethical responsibilities. One of the issues that can come up is privacy. You need to be careful that the AI platform you’re inputting information in is not publicly accessible. The other thing is that lawyers have a duty to ensure that what they’re doing is actually accurate. You read these stories on the legal blogs where some unfortunate lawyer submitted a brief that was based on some kind of incorrect AI result.

Advice to the Next Gen

Sanders: I’m hoping that the collegiality among attorneys isn’t affected by the tech age, and that young attorneys start to fight against settling for all-virtual-all-the-time. I have four young lawyers working for me, and I find it amazing that they never pick up a phone. They text or email. They’re like, “They’re not responding,” and I’m like, “Call them!” Network, speak with people, prioritize face-to-face contact.

Bonsib: When you are in court and you are examining a witness, you have to sort of move with the motion of the courtroom, if you will. You have got to pay attention. You have got to be flexible. You have got to be prepared to change your game plan. Those are skills that trial lawyers learn by trial and error. And no matter what the digital evidence is, you’ve got to have lawyers with even basic trial skills to be able to take the evidence and make it work in the courtroom. Younger lawyers really need to learn that it’s great to prepare your case, but if you go in with a fixed game plan and you’re not listening and feeling what changes in the courtroom as the trial develops, you’re not going to be as effective as you should be. 

Leppert: I think that billing models are going to change. More and more clients are looking for some form of fixed-fee, or caps, rather than hourly billing. The next generation needs to be flexible to respond to that need.

Beiser: I’ve had this conversation with a lot of, let’s say, “more seasoned” lawyers about how the younger attorneys don’t have our work ethic. They’re 9-to-5. They want to check in, check out. They’ve got lives. They want balance. They want to be paid a lot of money and they don’t want to work like we did or we do, which is 70, 80 hours a week. And I somewhat enjoy those hours. But I’ll tell you what: I bought a beach house, bought a boat, and for the first time in my career, I check out on weekends in the summer. I went on a catamaran in the British Virgin Islands and my wife said, “You’re not touching email. No access.”

I tried it the “younger” way, the balance … and it was pretty great.