On February 20, 2010, Kean Miller will celebrate twenty-seven years of excellence in the legal profession and more than two decades of helping to make Louisiana a better place to live and work.

The firm was born on Valentine's Day 1983 when five partners in Sanders, Downing, Kean and Cazedessus, a well-respected and successful Baton Rouge law firm, announced that they were leaving that partnership to begin a new firm. Gordon Kean, Ben Miller, Jr., Bob Hawthorne, Bill D'Armond, Charles McCowan, Jr., and Bill Jarman signed a partnership agreement on March 1, 1983.

Shortly thereafter, Len Kilgore, Gary Bezet and Carey Messina joined the new firm as founding partners. In the spring of 1983, Maureen Harbourt graduated from the LSU Law Center and joined the firm as the first law school graduate to join the original group -- and one of the first women in a major law firm in the Baton Rouge area.  Then came Vance Gibbs in 1983, Mack Gregorie and Blane Clark in 1984, and all the other  attorneys and talented staff who helped build the firm over the last 26 years.

In January 2006, we welcomed 12 new lawyers to our New Orleans office from a major New Orleans firm.  The 23 lawyers in our New Orleans office offer clients more than 250 years of combined experience in admiralty law, maritime litigation, construction law, commercial litigation, labor and employment, energy regulatory and energy litigation matters.

From our beginnings in 1983 with 11 lawyers, Kean Miller has grown to become the largest law firm in the Capitol Region with 130 lawyers, 300 employees, and offices in four Louisiana cities.