Miles Stockbridge

Miles & Stockbridge said yesterday that Lowell R. Bowen had been elected chairman of the Baltimore law firm, returning him to a post he held for 17 years until 1991. It also said it had decided not to merge with any out-of-state firm and instead will seek to grow by 100 lawyers over the next two years. Bowen, a specialist in corporate and securities law who has been at Miles & Stockbridge since he began practicing law in 1958, represents clients such as Black & Decker Corp. He was also author Tom Clancy's lawyer in a divorce case.

While other businesses have abandoned downtown Baltimore for new waterfront offices, Miles & Stockbridge PC instead has spent more than $6 million reshaping space in the Bank of America building that it has occupied for more than 70 years. "You just can't find a building like this," said John B. Frisch, chairman and chief executive officer of the law firm. "It's an extraordinary building. It's got so much soul, and it's right in the heart of the central business district." Downtown business leaders hope the firm's innovative and economical effort will help encourage others to reinvent their homes in the city's traditional commercial district rather than move out. Too often companies assume that older space is too difficult, too costly and too time-consuming to reconfigure, and opt for new space instead, Michele L. Whelley, president of the Downtown Partnership, said yesterday.

Lowell Reed Bowen, who was a fixture in Baltimore's legal and cultural community for more than a half-century and a managing partner of Miles & Stockbridge, died Tuesday of septic shock at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Cockeysville resident was 80. "Lowell was an extraordinarily gifted lawyer with instincts and judgment that were simply unparalleled," John B. Frisch, chairman and chief executive officer of Miles & Stockbridge, said in an e-mail statement to the firm's employees.

Miles & Stockbridge, one of the city's biggest law firms, said yesterday that it has recruited a pair of Washington environmental lawyers to beef up its practice in that fast-growing area of the law.Richard Hall, a partner at the Washington office of Sive, Paget & Riesel and a former principal counsel to the Maryland Department of the Environment, will work out of both Miles' Baltimore and Washington offices beginning next week. He brings along Lydia Belknap Duff, who will be an associate at Miles & Stockbridge.

French honored as graduate of leadership program Sandra H. French, chairman of Howard County's Board of Education, was honored as a 2003 graduate of the Maryland Association of Board of Education's leadership program at the organization's 46th annual conference Oct. 1-3 in Ocean City. The two-year leadership program includes course work, readings, coaching, observation of board meetings in other school systems, completion of a project and participation in activities of the Maryland Association of Boards of Education -- committees, conference facilitation, seminars or presentations.

Baltimore County's understaffed law office got some reinforcements this week as a new deputy attorney and two staff lawyers were hired.Virginia W. Barnhart, who has been with the Towson office of Miles & Stockbridge for 10 years, will be the new $70,000-a-year deputy county attorney, starting Dec. 6. Michele S. Towson and Constance A. Tucker, the new staff lawyers, already have started work.All three received law degrees from Maryland law schools. A source said the hirings are the result of County Executive Roger B. Hayden's desire to bring more female attorneys into the county law office.

For more than 20 years, Taneytown officials have relied on the same lawyer, Thomas Stansfield of Westminster, to guide them through the ins and outs of planning, zoning and lawmaking. But in January, Stansfield resigned as Taneytown city attorney to devote more time to his expanded private practice. The City Council has hired the Baltimore-based firm Miles & Stockbridge, which also has offices in Frederick. Stansfield, with his signature bow tie and suspenders, has been a fixture at council and zoning meetings, and has been attending them longer than any of the current elected officials.

Transamerica Tower in downtown Baltimore now has Transamerica employees working in it - with more to come. After months of preparation by the insurance and financial services company, 340 workers arrived Monday for their first day at 100 Light St. following a whirlwind move of their computers, telephones and other office necessities from Mount Vernon over the weekend. More workers will follow in two weeks, bringing the total to about 800. For Transamerica, the mostly short-distance move is an opportunity to bring all its Baltimore workers under one roof in its headquarters town - and to put its name on the top of one of the city's tallest buildings.

Michael D. Colglazier, a respected attorney who represented the Ravens and many of Baltimore's financial institutions in his three decades of practice, died of cancer Friday at his Lutherville home. He was 57. Born in Richmond, Va., and raised in Bel Air, he was a 1966 graduate of Bel Air High School. He earned a degree in political science at Amherst College, where he played on the football and rugby teams. He later served there as an assistant dean of admissions. He received his law degree from the University of Virginia.