A couple of interesting news items popped up yesterday in regard to the Houston legal community.
First, venerable Houston-based law firm Bracewell & Patterson announced that Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is becoming a partner in the firm and that the firm will be re-named Bracewell & Giuliani. Mr Giuliani will head up the firm’s new office in the Midtown section of Manhattan office, which the firm will open in May.
Bracewell is one of Houston’s largest law firms, but has always been a step below in size to the city’s big three, Vinson & Elkins, Fulbright & Jaworski, and Baker & Botts. Bracewell currently employs about 400 lawyers worldwide and has estimated gross revenues of $200 million. Its client list includes Royal Dutch Shell, Bank of America, the Bechtel Corporation and Kinder Morgan.
Meanwhile, on the east side of downtown, Fulbright & Jaworski became the first downtown Houston law firm to have a high-rise building named for the firm as its longtime headquarters — 1301 McKinney — was re-named Fulbright Tower.
Fulbright became the largest tenant in the building after former owner ChevronTexaco moved out and sold the property last year to Crescent Real Estate Equities Co. ChevronTexaco put the building up for sale after it bought the 40-story 1500 Louisiana Building for its new headquarters. Enron had built that building to be its headquarters, but Enron’s bankruptcy scuttled those plans and ChevronTexaco picked up the building on the cheap.
Houston's Clear Thinkers
Longtime Houston attorney Tom Kirkendall's observations on developments in law, business, medicine, culture, sports, and other matters of general interest to the Houston business, professional, and academic communities.
I presume that Giuliani is not being hired to do real work, but to pretend to do work on the basis that clients would rather have a (relatively) low paid associate do work for them when one of the partners is a celebrity.