The Baltimore law firm of Weinberg and Green suffered a major defection yesterday as three partners announced they would leave the firm, including the head of Weinberg's banking and commercial law group and the head of its bankruptcy practice.
Stanford D. Hess, Deborah Devan and Stanley Neuhauser will join Neuberger, Quinn, Gielen, Rubin & Gibber, a 15-lawyer firm founded in 1989 and populated by lawyers who also left larger firms.
Mr. Hess is the second present or former member of Weinberg's five-person executive committee to leave the firm this fall. Real estate lawyer Howard Majev's departure for a Washington firm became known in mid-October.
Weinberg is the state's seventh-largest law firm. Last year, it had 116 lawyers, including 38 equity partners, according to the Of Counsel 700, a directory of the nation's top law firms. The firm had shrunk by 10 percent since a 1992 survey.
Managing partner Charles Monk said yesterday that Weinberg now has "nearly 50" partners, and that the departures would not be a major blow.
"We expect to make more [partners] this fall, and we are talking to some laterals," he said, using an industry term for partners at one law firm who jump to another.
Mr. Hess is the best-known of the three lawyers leaving Weinberg. The 51-year old graduate of the University of Maryland Law School declined to confirm or deny an estimate that his practice has annual billings of about $1 million. The estimate was made by a lawyer at another firm that attempted to lure him.
Mr. Hess said he decided to move because he believes the future of Baltimore law is in small boutique firms. That has been especially true for banking attorneys like him, he said, because so many Maryland banks have been acquired by out-of-state competitors.
Much of the work for major banks that was once available to big Baltimore firms is now given to lawyers in Charlotte, N.C., Richmond, Va., or other cities whose banks have acquired most of Maryland's top institutions.