Craig Newman, who led the data privacy practice at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, died Wednesday morning after a battle with cancer. He was 61.

Newman worked at several prominent law firms and was a co-managing partner at Richards Kibbe & Orbe before he joined Patterson Belknap in 2015. People who knew him remarked on his high-profile legal career, including how he became a trailblazer in cybersecurity law. He was also described him as a caring mentor and friend.

Spencer Baretz, who runs the public relations firm Baretz+Brunelle, said he knew Newman for about 10 years and the two of them were very close. He said Newman had been confident that he could beat his cancer, but took a turn for the worse in recent weeks and died at about 1 a.m. Wednesday with his family and close friends present.

“He was a giant intellect,” Baretz said. “He was an incredible father and family man. He was a mensch, a personal friend to his clients. He was an incredible figure … he had a blessed, beautiful life.”

Lisa Cleary, the managing partner at Patterson Belknap, said Newman was “a wonderful mentor” to younger lawyers at the firm. A former journalist, he ran the firm's Data Security Law Blog, helped associates become better writers and “brought out the best” in their writing, she said.

“His time with us was relatively brief—it was the last four years—but we are so happy that in the last four years of his life, he enriched our firm and the lawyers and staff who work here,” she said.

A funeral for Newman was scheduled for Thursday at the Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, according to his firm's website.

He is survived by his wife Susan and two children, Rachel and Jonathan.

Newman was born in 1957. According to his LinkedIn profile, he graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in journalism in 1979 and got his master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1981. He went on to the University of Detroit Law School and graduated in 1984.

Baretz said that after a clerkship, Newman worked at Cahill Gordon & Reindel under Floyd Abrams, the renowned First Amendment lawyer. He moved to an in-house role at a Disney affiliate and then moved to Arnold & Porter, where he spent 16 years, according to his LinkedIn profile, before moving to Richards Kibbe.

In a 2014 interview about his move to Patterson Belknap, Newman said his clients included investment funds, hedge funds and private investors. He became a partner in Patterson Belknap's litigation department and led its data privacy and cybersecurity practice. Cleary said he was also on the firm's cybersecurity committee, where he helped the firm set its own policies in that area.

In addition to counseling clients, Newman wrote columns for the New York Times and the Washington Post about cybersecurity, data privacy and internet freedom.

Correction: a previous version of this story stated that Craig Newman had graduated from the University of Arizona. He graduated from Arizona State University. We regret the error.