i put the soap handler configuration under the META-INF directory (standard-javaxws-endpoint-config.xml) with the following content as mentioned in the seam reference
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <endpoints xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/jax-ws/ri/runtime" version="2.0"> <endpoint name="Hello" implementation="hello.Hello" url-pattern="/ws/hello"> <handler-chains xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"> <handler-chain> <protocol-bindings>##SOAP11_HTTP</protocol-bindings> <handler> <handler-name>SOAP Request Handler</handler-name> <handler-class>org.jboss.seam.webservice.SOAPRequestHandler</handler-class> </handler> </handler-chain> </handler-chains> </endpoint> </endpoints>