Born to J.S. and Lola Bracewell in the former town of Harrisburg in Houston's East End in 1921, Bracewell was schooled at Harrisburg Elementary, Deady Middle School and Milby High School.

While attending Baylor University, the man known as "Brace" to his friends met his future wife, Muriel, to whom he was married for 54 years.

He graduated from Baylor Law School and joined his father, his brother Searcy and future state District Judge Bert Tunks in founding the Houston law firm Bracewell & Tunks in 1945. Bracewell practiced law for 50 years.

"The standard of personal, professional and public service he achieved made a mark on Houston that will not likely be equaled," his son, Brad Bracewell, said.

The firm changed its name to Bracewell & Patterson in 1966 and became Bracewell & Giuliani in 2005, when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani joined as a partner. The firm now has 400 lawyers in New York, Connecticut, Texas, Washington, D.C., Kazakhstan and London.

Bracewell served as port commissioner from 1968 to 1970 before becoming chairman, serving the longest tenure of anyone in that post, 15 years. He traveled to ports around the world to promote trade and boost the Port of Houston's stature, as well as leading the development of the terminal and his namesake, the Fentress Bracewell Barbours Cut Terminal, at Morgan's Point.

Bracewell also was chairman of the regional board of the Institute of International Education, which directs, among others, the Fulbright Scholars program. He served on numerous other boards, including the First Continental Life & Accident Insurance Co., Cemex, First Investors Financial Services Corp., Frontier Airlines, American Funeral Services and the Broadway Plan of Church Finance.

Bracewell also served as a director of the Houston Chamber of Commerce and as a trustee and Sunday school teacher at Westminster United Methodist Church.

An avid baseball fan, Bracewell was credited with helping to bring Major League Baseball to Houston. His family said that, although he was a stickler for following the rules, he allowed his son and daughter to skip school in April 1962 to accompany him to the first Houston Colt .45's game, where they saw the home team defeat the Chicago Cubs 11-2.

In later years, after the team became the Astros and moved from an open ball park to a world-famous domed stadium, Bracewell faithfully cheered from his seats along the first-base line.

"He had the best seats in the house," Phillips said.

In addition to Bracewell's wife and son, survivors include his daughter, Lyn B. Phillips, and grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nephews and a niece.

A memorial service will be conducted at 10 a.m. June 22 at Westminster United Methodist Church, 5801 San Felipe.

McCarter & English has spent the past five years aggressively expanding its reach along the eastern seaboard, following a growth plan spearheaded by firm Chairman Andrew T. Berry and managing partner Lois M. Van Deusen from its central office in Newark, N.J.

Now the firm is expanding in a different manner. With Van Deusen retiring after 29 years at the firm, management reins for the first time are being handed to a non-Newark attorney. Partner Eric Watt Wiechmann, in the firm's Hartford, Conn., office, recently was named deputy managing partner. He is scheduled to replace Van Deusen on Oct. 1.

Wiechmann's rise to the top of the 416-lawyer firm began when he joined McCarter's executive committee immediately after he and Berry orchestrated the firm's 2003 acquisition of 30 lawyers from Stamford, Conn.-based Cummings & Lockwood, the firm for which Wiechmann served as managing partner in its Hartford office. Wiechmann was appointed to McCarter's compensation committee approximately six months later.

Last month, McCarter's executive committee voted Wiechmann to be Van Deusen's successor. Berry will remain as chairman, a position he's held since 1997. In that role, Berry is still able to devote roughly 80 percent of his time to his insurance litigation practice for well-known clients such as Johnson & Johnson and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Wiechmann, who turns 59 this year, said he will temporarily suspend his products liability practice in order to manage the firm full time. He noted that he might return to active practice after his stint as managing partner, a term that lasts three years with the opportunity to serve longer, he said.

Though excited about guiding a firm in the midst of a growth spurt, Wiechmann said his desire to continue trying cases makes the move somewhat bittersweet. "You don't do something this long [33 years] for the money," Wiechmann said. "I've done it because I love being a trial lawyer."

Though Wiechmann will spend more time traveling to and from Newark and McCarter's seven other offices, Hartford will be his home base "for the time being," he said.

NEW MIND-SET

Van Deusen, who has worked for no other firm since her admission to the bar in 1978, became McCarter's first full-time managing partner in 2002 when she transitioned away from her active high-end real estate investment practice and her primary client, Prudential.

At that time, Van Deusen was "one of a small handful of women in the country who was managing partner of a law firm with more than 250 people," Berry said.

"She always conceived it would be her last job with the law firm. It was her choice [to retire], not ours," he noted. "[Managing partner] is a tough job, and she's done it well for five years."

Van Deusen, who spent five years as a grade school teacher before entering law school in the early 1970s, said she decided two years ago to retire at the end of the 2007 fiscal year. Though she has no definitive plans for retirement, outside of traveling, she said she will remain active as a board member for organizations such as the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice and Habitat for Humanity in Newark.

"I'm sure after this high-powered, stressful existence it will be a challenge to slow down," Van Deusen said.

Easing into retirement was no stroll into the sunset for Van Deusen. She took over as managing partner at a time when McCarter was on the verge of its growth spurt. As the firm redefined itself, attorneys were required to streamline their practice into a single discipline, or two complementing ones, rather than multiple practice areas, Van Deusen said. At the same time, McCarter's compensation structure became merit-based, and attorneys were broken of the mind-set that the firm's offices operated independently; instead, Van Deusen noted, practice groups began to cross over state lines as the firm expanded its reach.

McCarter acquired Boston-based Gadsby Hannah last June and now operates offices in Boston, Hartford, Stamford, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Wilmington, Del. The changes "made us more modern and nimble," Van Deusen said. Washington, D.C., is the next likely market destination, Van Deusen indicated, before the firm sets its eyes westward.

The firm's expansion under Berry and Van Deusen created the right opportunity for McCarter to consider a managing partner who was located outside of New Jersey, Berry said.

"Our first managing partner had to be home-grown, so to speak, just for the emotional part of things," he noted.

Wiechmann said that under his management the firm will remain focused on expanding practice areas and markets. "We're always looking to grow," he noted, "but nothing has developed to the point that I can discuss it."

Seymour M. Lazar and Paul T. Selzer were accused of participating in a kickback and laundering scheme that involved $2.4 million in alleged secret payments dating back to 1981 in connection with more than 50 class-action or shareholders lawsuits.

The far-reaching indictment cites dozens of class- and shareholder-derivative action lawsuits against corporate giants including Denny's, United Airlines, Standard Oil, Genentech and Pacific Gas & Electric. The indictment says the suits netted Lerach's former firm, Milberg Weiss, more than $44 million in fees over more than 25 years.

The statement by the San Diego-based Lerach Coughlin firm came amid speculation over William Lerach's possible legal situation. Federal prosecutors in California have been investigating for seven years whether Lerach and his former law partners played a role in possibly illegal kickbacks to clients in multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuits.

Word that Lerach, 61, may retire from the firm came around the same time one of his former law partners, David Bershad, reportedly has been in discussions with prosecutors about a possible plea deal. Lerach's former firm, Milberg Weiss, as well as former partners Bershad and Steven Schulman, were indicted last year.

Alan Lowenstein, a civic leader and founder of one of the state's largest law firms, Lowenstein Sandler, died today. He was 93.

Born in Newark, Lowenstein chaired the city's charter reform movement, which restructured city government during the 1950s to root out corruption. In 1961, he founded his own law firm in Newark and saw it grow from five lawyers to 250, with offices in Roseland and New York City.

In 1999, he founded the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, which works through the courts and the Legislature to rebuild cities, help prison inmates rejoin society, fight poverty and discrimination and assure equal access to the courts.

Lowenstein also was active in the Essex County Council of Jewish Agencies, the Welfare Federation of Newark and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, on whose board he served.

"Alan Lowenstein's vision and leadership helped to create the firm that we are today: one that embraces the ideals of professional excellence, commitment to its clients' interests, civic duty and diversity,'' managing director Michael Rodburg said in a statement posted on the firm's Web page.

The arrest of John Zarcone, an attorney and the scion of one of Putnam County's best-known political families, on charges of cocaine possession and threatening to kill his wife has shocked the many people who know him from public life.

The aggressive, tough-talking lawyer who shaped development in his town as leader of its Planning Board was arrested Sunday night by Putnam County sheriff's deputies.

Zarcone, 45, was accused of having cocaine and hydrocodone, a narcotic painkiller contained in prescription drugs such as Vicodin, as well as calling and verbally abusing his wife before threatening to kill her.

Zarcone released a brief written statement shortly after 5 p.m. yesterday, sent via fax from his law office. It said that he had turned himself in to police and had "now placed myself in a rehabilitation facility."

"I am fortunate to have the support of my loving wife and children in this difficult time," he said. "I look forward to overcoming this problem and resuming a normal life."

His mother, Marie Zarcone, also an influential figure in Republican Party circles, denied yesterday that her son had drugs on him at the time of his arrest. She also said he had checked himself into a treatment program. She refused to give further details.

"This is a domestic situation, and this is a first offense," she said. "He is seeking the medical help he needs, and he will be exonerated."

One former partner in Jenkens & Gilchrist’s Chicago office, Paul Daugerdas, earned $93 million in fees from tax shelter work, making him one of the single wealthiest participants in the tax shelter business, according to the New York Times.

Jenkens & Gilchrist, which will close its doors at the end of April, will also admit to criminal wrongdoing in the shelters, and will cooperate with the government in its continuing investigations. It was not clear whether Mr. Daugerdas and other colleagues were cooperating, the Times reports.

The agreement with Jenkens & Gilchrist is expected to assist in a wider probe of firms, including Ernst & Young, Deutsche Bank, and Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, and former tax partners with KPMG who were involved in the creation and marketing of the tax shelters.

Law firms have paid fines over the years, but have managed to avoid major damage from scandals involving their clients. Arthur Andersen was indicted in the collapse of Enron, but the company’s outside law firm, Vinson & Elkins, LLP, was not charged.

The main reason is that much of what attorneys do for their clients remains out of sight, according to Stephen Gillers, a legal-ethics professor at New York University School of Law, the Wall Street Journal reports. “Documents are kept confidential, . . . and prosecutors – have a hard time discovering potential wrongdoing by lawyers.”

But the fallout from the original Enron indictments continues. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced last week that it is suing two former Enron corporate attorneys for participating in the massive fraud. Jordan H. Mintz, former general counsel, advised the business unit operated by Andrew Fastow, according to the Washington Post. Rex R. Rogers, also named in the suit, is former associate general counsel and a former SEC enforcement lawyer. He reviewed Enron’s public disclosures and securities filings.

The meltdown of Jenkens & Gilchrist, which numbered 600 partners in 2002, has not been as dramatic as the collapse of Andersen, but within a year of the announcement of the investigation in 2004, the firm’s revenue had fallen by 30 percent as partners left taking their clients with them. Only about200 partners remain with the firm, the Journal says.

Gerald Welch, a former Jenkens partner, said that the criminal investigation and the large number of civil lawsuits brought by investors “just became too much of a burden for them to overcome,” according to the Times.

“It became a question of the name,” he said.

A Jenkens’ spokesperson assigned blame to the Chicago office, according to a statement issued by New York prosecutors, the Times reports. “Those responsible for overseeing the Chicago tax practice placed unwarranted trust in the judgment and integrity of the attorneys principally responsible for that practice and failed to exercise effective oversight and control over the firm’s tax shelter practice.”

The firm’s Chicago office issued legal opinion letters blessing the shelters to 1,400 clients according to the IRS. It charged $50,000 apiece for these letters.

But he acknowledges his political opponents will try to exploit recent news that a lawyer with his Houston law firm has been representing Citgo before the Texas legislature.

Citgo Petroleum is a U-S-based company bought in 1990 by Venezuela's national oil company. It employs thousands of people in the U-S.

Chavez has criticized President Bush and is close to Fidel Castro. So Citgo has become unpopular with some Americans.

Giuliani is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2008.