Treem branches out with move to Brown Goldstein Levy

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Well-known Baltimore criminal defense lawyer Joshua Treem has joined Brown Goldstein Levy LLP after more than 32 years at the law firm he helped found.

Treem is known for taking on difficult and sometimes high-profile cases, from embattled Maryland politicians to one of the D.C. snipers. He left Schulman, Treem & Gilden P.A. last month; the firm is now known as Schulman, Hershfield & Gilden P.A., Treem said.

“I would not have left my own firm to do anything else other than come here,” Treem said. “I would not have if it was another firm or another offer. I still have 32-plus years with [Schulman]. They were wonderful years.”

Treem said the move will allow him to do more civil law, an opportunity he said he did not have at his smaller firm, which has about 10 attorneys and a smaller support staff.

“[Brown Goldstein Levy] does a lot of work in the civil field that I haven’t had the chance to do and they are giving me a chance to bring my experience and they are giving me a chance to expand my level of litigation. …” Treem said. “These guys are giving me a chance to do a lot more.”

Since Brown Goldstein Levy is better known for tort law and discrimination cases, Treem will expand the firm’s presence in white-collar criminal defense, said partner Dan Goldstein, who has known Treem since 1976. The two men worked together in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baltimore.

The firm’s criminal law practice already includes former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Stu Simms and Andrew D. Levy, a well-known trial and appellate lawyer, as well as many other attorneys who do criminal-law work here and there, Goldstein said.

“I bring something to them, and they bring something to me,” Treem said. “It gives me an opportunity to play in their garden, if you will.”

Specifically, Goldstein said he thought Treem could contribute to health-care fraud investigations Goldstein expects to flood in over the next few years.

“There are few trial lawyers in the state that have [Treem’s] skill,” Goldstein said. “When we get important litigation coming in of any kind, he is going to be a critical member of the team.”

Treem’s former partner, Robert B. Schulman, said Schulman, Hershfield & Gilden wants to concentrate more on corporate work, real estate development and civil litigation, areas attorneys other than Treem have focused on for years. Treem, he said, wanted to do more white-collar crime work.

“He moved in a new direction,” Schulman said. “He wanted to do a lot of white-collar crime, and we are not convinced that it is the best direction to go in. He went to a place where he thought he could do as much white-collar crime as possible.”

Schulman, Hershfield & Gilden made Leslie D. Hershfield a name partner after Treem left last month.

“The future of our firm, we think, is very strong,” Schulman said. “We have a lot of clients that we have had for a very long time. We expect to keep these clients and build on them as we have from the day that we started.”

Schulman, who has known Treem for 38 years, said he and Treem never had an argument as partners and Treem’s split from the firm was friendly. Schulman even said if the firm is approached with any white-collar crime work in the future, it will pass it on to Treem.

“He’s my friend,” Schulman said. “He will always be my friend. I’m his friend. It’s completely amicable.”

Treem has represented a wide range of clients, from the president of Shoppers Food Warehouse accused of bribing a state senator to the Colts football team when the city tried to prevent its relocation to Indianapolis.

Last year, Treem successfully defended Baltimore City Councilwoman Helen Holton against bribery charges. In 2010, he represented one of five arsonists who torched 35 homes in a Southern Maryland subdivision as well as a man suing the Baltimore City Paper for defamation.

Treem represented Nicholas W. Browning, 15, of Cockeysville, who killed his parents and two brothers. Browning was sentenced to four life terms in prison in 2009.

In another high-profile case, Treem obtained a life-without-parole sentence for a client who kidnapped and shot three women at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in the first federal death penalty case in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt. Treem averted the death penalty by arguing his client had been influenced by an older man to commit the crimes.

The case had similarities to Treem’s most well-known client, Lee Boyd Malvo, who helped John Allen Muhammad — a man Malvo saw as a father figure — shoot and kill 10 people and injure three over 23 days in the Beltway Sniper attacks in 2002.

Treem attended The Johns Hopkins University, graduating with his bachelor’s degree in 1969. He then attended Duke University School of Law and graduated in 1972. He then worked for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

From 1973 to 1978, Treem worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Baltimore. He then worked Weinberg & Green LLC, which later merged with Saul Ewing LLP, for two and a half years before founding Schulman & Treem.

“But for this opportunity, I would not have left,” Treem said. “There are some pangs with leaving something I built over 32 years. This is something I could not pass up.”