Mark Evans: Giuliani’s Departure from Bracewell was no Surprise

© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.

By Mark Curriden

HOUSTON (Jan. 20) – Bracewell Managing Partner Mark Evans says that the firm made “a wonderful decision” a decade ago to hire former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as a partner and add his name to the front door.

Firm leadership decided to drop Giuliani’s name from its letterhead last year as part of a re-branding effort, Evans said Wednesday in an interview with The Texas Lawbook. He also said Giuliani’s departure was completely the former presidential candidate’s decision.

“Bracewell is closing a chapter in its book,” he said. “A lot of our partners anticipated that Rudy would leave at some point. Ten years was just about the longest he has been anywhere.”

Besides, he said, “Giuliani was always a tough name to spell.”

Giuliani announced Tuesday that he is joining Greenberg Traurig as a partner in its New York office. He praised Bracewell as an excellent law firm, but he said he wanted to be at a larger firm that would provide him a broader platform to expand his cybersecurity and white-collar criminal defense practice.

Evans said Giuliani did exactly what the firm wanted and expected: He opened and grew the New York office and he brought national attention to the Houston-based law firm.

“It was a great investment,” he said. “Rudy did everything we asked him to do. It was a wonderful decision to bring him to the firm. For me, it was mission accomplished.”

Giuliani opened the firm’s New York office when he joined in 2005 and grew it to the 80 lawyers they have today, which makes it Bracewell’s largest office outside of Houston, he said.

Despite the extraordinary cost of operating a law practice in Manhattan, Evans said the New York office is profitable. He said Bracewell’s long-term strategic plan calls for the firm to grow even more in New York.

Evans said he visited the New York office this week and that the morale of the lawyers and staff remains high. While Evans said he and others at the firm will miss Giuliani, the departure does not impact the firm’s leadership structure or its plans for the future.

“Rudy was never part of day-to-day management,” he said.

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