SAN FRANCISCO - A major personnel shakeup is threatening to put a large dent in revenues at Jones Hall Hill & White, one of the top municipal bond law firms in California.
Co-founding partner Sharon Stanton White and two other partners, Brian Quint and Paul Thimmig, will resign from the San Francisco-based firm, a company spokesman said late Monday. Furthermore, Quint and Thimmig intend to start up a rival bond counsel boutique.
White - one of the four founders of Jones Hall and an expert in the field of federal tax law as it applies to municipal bonds - is planning to leave the firm on June 1.
Jones Hall spokesman Thomas A. Downey said White is relocating to Washington to be near her daughter and hopes to remain active in municipal finance. White will retain a professional affiliation with the firm to the extent there is no conflict of interest with her future work, Downey said.
White is a former president of the National Association of Bond Lawyers, and a member of the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission's technical advisory committee.
Quint and Thimmig - who have been with Jones Hall since 1985 and are considered to be among the firm's most active partners - intend to leave on April 1 to establish their own law firm in San Francisco.
Jones Hall president Charles Adams said the departure of Quint and Thimmig is "amicable," but acknowledged that it will cut into the firm's business.
"They will try to take their business and we will try to hang onto it," said Adams, noting that Quint has been the firm's top producer for the last several years.
Founded in 1978 as a boutique specializing in municipal finance, Jones Hall was the fourth most productive bond counsel firm in California in 1996, handling $2.38 billion of overall transactions. Nationally, the firm ranked 22d last year.
Adams said an anticipated reduction in the firm's business after Quint and Thimmig leave means Jones Hall will no longer need both of its tax attorneys. That accounts, in part, for the timing of White's resignation, Adams said.
"Losing two productive attorneys puts us in the position of needing only one tax attorney. With Brian and Paul leaving, it allowed (White) to move on in a way that didn't hurt the firm," Adams said.
With the departure of White, all federal tax work for Jones Hall will be handled by David A. Walton, who joined the firm in 1992. Walton formerly served as an attorney-adviser on tax-exempt bonds at the U.S. Treasury Department.
White was unavailable to comment on her resignation. Thimmig said he and Quint have "no comment at this time."
Quint and Thimmig reportedly are leaving, in part, because they were frustrated with the firm's policy of compensating all partners equally, rather than tying individual pay to the volume of business generated by each partner, according to several California market participants who asked not to be named.
"It is not a perfect system and does cause some stress and strain," Adams said of the compensation policy. "It is fair to say it is one of the reasons (Quint and Thimmig) are leaving, although quite frankly I think their concerns could be addressed."
But Adams said he believed Thimmig and Quint were motivated to leave mostly because they were excited by the prospect of starting up their own law firm. "In the final analysis this was not a compensation issue," Adams said.
He denied industry speculation that the resignations might trigger a break-up of Jones Hall. "If anything, the attorneys who are here have been energized by this and we are dedicated to the long-term business," he said.
After the resignations have taken effect, the firm will have 10 partners and one associate.
The firm said Monday that it was promoting its current associate, Christopher K. Lynch, to partner status. Before joining Jones Hall in 1994, Lynch practiced real estate, land use, and municipal bond law, and served as a law clerk to Justice Stanley Mosk on the California Supreme Court from 1989 to 1990.
In addition, the firm said it has decided to hire as an associate Courtney L. Jones, a 1990 graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara and graduate of the McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific in 1995. For the past year, Jones - no relationship to the firm's co-founder, Kenneth Jones - has worked for Jones Hall as a contract lawyer.
