Clarence Graves, 96, passed away on April 24, 2010. Mr. Graves was a former founding member and attorney for the Elmhurst Art Museum. Mr. Graves graduated from North Park College in 1938. He received his J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1943. He passed the bar in 1943 and enlisted in the Navy the next day. He served in WWII and started to practice probate and real estate law in 1946 at 77 W. Washington in Chicago. Mr. Graves moved his practice to Elmhurst in the 1980s. "Even in retirement he helped whoever he could with legal matters," said his daughter, Nancy Olson.

Noted civil liberties attorney Burton Joseph, 79, of Evanston, passed away late last month in San Francisco. Mr. Joseph was a partner in the Chicago law firm of Joseph, Lichtenstein & Levinson. He defended activists arrested at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, acted as executive director of the Playboy Foundation and was a founding member of  Lawyers for the Creative Arts. In his most celebrated case, in the late 1970s, he successfully persuaded the American Civil Liberties Union to back the National Socialist Party of America --a Nazi group -- in its efforts to be allowed to march through heavily Jewish Skokie. As the son of Jewish cemetery owners on Chicago's West Side, Mr. Joseph's stand cost him some friends, but "though he violently disagreed with what the Nazis said, he strongly believed in their right to say it," his daughter Jody said. The Nazis were eventually allowed to march but decided to do so in Chicago instead. The battle was later dramatized in the TV movie, "Skokie," and inspired scenes in "The Blues Brothers." Obituaries for Mr. Joseph: Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Times

Hon. Michael A. Orenic, 85, passed away at his Joliet home last Friday. Orenic was an ISBA Laureate Award Winner in 2006. The Laureate Award, the supreme honor bestowed by the Academy of Illinois Lawyers, is awarded to those deemed to exemplify the highest ideals of the profession. A graduate of the DePaul University College of Law, he was an Army Air Corps officer during World War II. Elected to the bench in 1964, Orenic was presiding judge in Will County for 16 years while the circuit included Kankakee and Iroquois Counties. He served as chief judge from 1977 to 1982 and from 1986 to 1988, and he retired in 1990 to spend more time with his nine children and ailing wife, who died in 1996. Even before he retired in 1990, Orenic was "legendary" in the Will County courts, said Joliet attorney George Mahoney III, who had nominated Orenic for the laureate honors. "He was a fascinating guy -- a brilliant guy," Mahoney said. "He was a big guy with flowing white hair. He had this physical aura about him. He looked like a judge." The 2006 Laureate Award Winners Obituary: Will County loses a "brilliant" judge

Roger W. Barrett, 94, a partner for many years with Mayer Brown, died earlier this year in Rancho Mirage, Calif., of complications from pneumonia. Mr. Barrett had already started his law carer in Chicago when he joined the Army in 1943. Eventually a captain, he was enlisted for the team led by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson that would prosecute top Nazis in Nuremberg. He was assigned the task of assembling the government's evidence, which included everything from letters and diaries to lampshades made of human skin. He went over some of the evidence with Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering, who he remembered as highly intelligent, arrogant and amoral. "He said that Goering was completely immoral, there was no sense of right or wrong," said his son, Oliver. Click here to read the full obituary in the Chicago Tribune.