Minority-owned law firm Brown & Sheehan to split

One of Baltimore’s best-known minority-owned law firms is splitting up.

Michael A. Brown, majority owner of Brown & Sheehan LLP, will join Miles & Stockbridge P.C., where he practiced at the beginning of his career.

“In a way, I’m going back home,” Brown said.

He will take along two other partners at the firm, Michael E. Blumenfeld and Deborah K. St. Lawrence.

David M. Sheehan, the other name partner at Brown & Sheehan, said he will either rename the firm and continue on his own or join an existing practice.

“He believes that the resources and strength of a firm [of] 200-plus lawyers like Miles will help him grow and get representation of firms nationwide that he can’t get with a small firm,” Sheehan said of Brown. “He deserves that platform. I hope he gets it.”

The two men are at different places in their careers, both said.

Brown & Sheehan has been operating under that name for about six years.

Other lawyers at the firm have already left for other jobs, though Brown declined to say where they had gone without first getting their approval. At one point, the firm had 12 lawyers.

Brown, who is black, said he will continue to support other minority-owned firms in town. There are many left to “carry the torch,” he said.

About 2½ years ago, Brown & Sheehan leased office space with another prominent minority-owned firm, The Murphy Firm, and hinted at a possible merger. That did not happen because the two practices were incompatible, Sheehan said.

“Everyone was great friends and everyone had great aspirations in the beginning,” he said.

But “our business model [is] much more corporate representation and fee-for-service,” he said. Murphy takes more “high-end, high-profile cases that are oftentimes structured as contingent-fee agreements. They’ve had great success. The models really don’t merge well together.”

Sheehan said he may join The Murphy Firm in January, after Brown & Sheehan dissolves, but cannot make a commitment because he is in talks with other firms as well.

“I think I would give serious consideration to it,” he said.

In 2006, Brown & Sheehan formed a “strategic alliance” with Venable LLP, under whose terms they were to cooperate on some cases. The alliance was promoted as a deal between a large firm and a small, well-respected minority-owned firm.

Both Michael Brown and David Sheehan said they expect that alliance will end with the dissolution of the firm.

The two firms did collaborate on some cases — including for the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Magna Entertainment Corp. — but the alliance was never quite as productive as the parties had hoped, Sheehan said.

“With great fanfare, we announced it,” he said. “For whatever reason, it never really caught on the way it was intended to.”