Heyman Law Firm

Focus and practice areas

Heyman Law Firm handles business law from a Baltimore base, and the work splits into two halves: litigation and transactions. The firm represents small-to-midsize businesses along with individuals. Its clients sit in Maryland, the District of Columbia and across the Mid-Atlantic, and the firm also assists clients in other states with business issues.

The litigation half covers commercial disputes, breach of contract claims, partnership and corporate fights, commercial lease disputes and real estate litigation. The firm also handles estates and trusts litigation, including contested wills. That last pairing is worth pausing on, because probate disputes and business disputes often share the same root: a family company where ownership and inheritance overlap.

On the transactional side, the firm advises on entity selection and formation, daily operations, succession and dissolution. It represents developers and landlords in real estate transactions as well as disputes. Employment agreements, restrictive covenants, non-compete provisions and employment transition issues round out the list.

FINRA arbitration work

The firm's lawyers handle FINRA arbitrations for both claimants and respondents, which is a narrower skill than general commercial litigation. FINRA arbitration is the forum where most disputes between investors and brokerage firms end up, because customer agreements typically require it.

These cases run under FINRA's Code of Arbitration Procedure. A claimant files a statement of claim, the respondent answers, and a panel drawn from FINRA's roster hears the matter. Panels can include public and industry arbitrators depending on the claim size and the parties' elections. Discovery follows FINRA's own document production lists rather than court rules, and the hearing outcome is generally binding with very limited grounds for appeal.

Representing both sides of that docket is a practical detail. A firm that has answered claims on behalf of a brokerage knows how the defense reads a claim, and the reverse holds too.

How the team is built

The site names three lawyers. William S. Heyman is the founder, listed as Founding Attorney on the About page and as Managing Partner on the Home page. Chantal Gittens and Simon Penning are listed as Principals.

Heyman and the firm's other lawyers have represented individuals in real estate, intra-corporate and employment disputes. That mix lines up cleanly with the practice areas the site advertises, which is a small consistency check that in my opinion matters more than it sounds. Plenty of firm websites list practice areas that no named attorney appears to actually work in.

A three-lawyer roster with all three at partner or principal level tells you something about how matters get staffed. The person who takes the initial call is likely the person who argues the motion. For a mid-sized company in a partnership dispute, that continuity has real value, since the factual background in these cases is usually dense and expensive to re-explain.

What the practice areas involve

Partnership and intra-corporate disputes

These are among the harder commercial matters to resolve, and the firm names them directly. The dispute usually turns on the operating agreement or partnership agreement, so the first question is what the governing document says about deadlock, buyout and expulsion. Where the document is silent, Maryland's LLC and corporations statutes supply default rules.

Valuation is often the sticking point. Once the parties agree someone is leaving, they still have to price the departing interest, and that frequently requires competing expert appraisals. Judicial dissolution is available in some circumstances, though courts treat it as a remedy of last resort for closely held entities.

Restrictive covenants and non-competes

The firm handles employment agreements, restrictive covenants and employment transition issues. Maryland courts enforce non-compete provisions where the restriction protects a legitimate business interest and the scope in duration, geography and activity is reasonable. Courts examine whether the employee has customer contact or access to confidential information.

These disputes move fast. An employer who believes a former employee has taken clients or information typically seeks a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction within days, which means both sides need counsel who can assemble an evidentiary record quickly. The firm's dual footing in litigation and drafting is relevant here, since the lawyers who litigate these clauses tend to draft better ones.

Real estate matters

The firm represents developers and landlords in transactions and disputes, and handles commercial lease disputes and real estate litigation. Commercial lease fights commonly involve rent escalation clauses, common area maintenance charges, assignment and subletting restrictions, and holdover situations. Unlike residential tenancies, commercial leases give the parties broad freedom to allocate risk by contract, so the lease language does most of the work.

What the record shows

The firm's public materials describe practice areas and identify its lawyers by name and role.As a reviewer, that is the sort of listing this directory can assess with some confidence, because its elements can be compared with statements on the firm's own pages.

The site does not state a founding year, and it publishes no law school or bar admission details for the three named attorneys. Readers who want that background will need to ask during an initial consultation, and it's a reasonable thing to ask.

What the site does establish is a defined scope. Heyman Law Firm works on business matters for businesses and individuals in a specific geographic band, with a named founder and two named principals carrying the work. The practice areas cluster tightly around commercial relationships and what happens when they break: contracts, partnerships, leases, employment restrictions, brokerage accounts and estates.

In my opinion, that clustering is the most useful signal in the listing. A company facing a partnership deadlock and a company facing a FINRA claim are different clients, though the underlying skill, taking a document-heavy commercial dispute through an adversarial forum, is the same. Heyman Law Firm has organized itself around that skill.

Office and contact information

The directory record gives a precise Baltimore address for Heyman Law Firm: 201 N Charles St. That street-level detail adds a practical reference point for anyone confirming where a meeting will take place or where correspondence should be directed. It also helps distinguish the office from firms with similar names, especially when a prospective client is comparing several directory entries.

The published telephone number is (410) 305-9287. The record also links directly to the firm's website at https://www.heymanfirm.com/. Together, those contact points give a prospective client two clear ways to start an inquiry. The telephone route may suit someone who first wants to confirm whether a matter falls within the firm's work, while the website provides access to the firm's own description of its lawyers and services.

For an initial contact, the complete address is worth keeping alongside the telephone number. Business disputes often involve documents that a lawyer must review before offering a useful assessment. A caller can use the listed number to ask how the firm prefers to receive those materials and whether the first discussion will occur at the Charles Street office.

How the directory classifications read

The structured directory record assigns separate categories for securities law and for broker misconduct and FINRA. That distinction is useful because the record treats securities law as its own subject heading, while pairing broker misconduct with a named dispute forum in another category. Readers searching by the broader securities label can therefore identify the firm without collapsing that category into the more specific FINRA classification.

The record uses the same layered approach elsewhere. Business litigation and civil litigation appear as separate categories, while breach of contract and partnership disputes receive their own issue-specific labels. Business formation also has a distinct entry instead of appearing solely under the general business-law heading. In my view, this taxonomy makes the scope of the listing easier to read: broad categories identify the overall type of legal work, and narrower labels identify the particular business problems attached to the record.