Hunton & Williams LLP history

A year later, in 1902, Andrews & Ball was formed in Houston, Texas, when an experienced and influential trial lawyer, Frank Andrews, and US Congressman Thomas Ball, partnered to provide legal services to clients such as Gulf Coast Lines, Bankers Trust Company and Union National Bank.

Munford was unable to practice for very long, however; having contracted tuberculosis, he retired in 1906 and died a few years later.

1913: Offices move to Richmond's new Electric Building.

In 1914 the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac railroad became a client of the law firm.

In 1934, the firm added Melvin Kurth as a name partner.

A new partner, Thomas Justin Moore, presented the utility industry's opposition to the Public Utilities Holding Company Act of 1935 before Congress passed it.

Upon the death of Frank Andrews in 1936, Melvin Kurth became the firm’s administrative partner.

In 1943, during the Second World War, two women lawyers were hired to work at Hunton & Williams: Sarah Geer Dale and Nan Ross McConnell.

The Richmond law firm represented several insurance company creditors in this reorganization that was finally concluded in 1947 by a ruling of the United States Supreme Court.

In 1949 the law firm participated in its first utilities rate case when it represented The Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia.

From just 11 in January 1950, the firm almost tripled its number of lawyers by the end of the decade.

In 1954 the law firm changed its name to Hunton, Williams, Gay, Moore & Powell.

1966: An office is opened in Washington, D.C.

In 1971, Hunton & Williams senior partner, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States.

1972: Hunton & Williams attorney Lewis Powell is named to the United States Supreme Court.

After the death of Howard Hughes, Jr. in 1976, Andrews Kurth began 20 years of work on tax planning, administrative, litigation, asset liquidation and inheritance disputes involving his estate.

Realizing that many memories of the firm's history were fading quickly, in 1982 Hunton & Williams started an oral history program that yielded over 55 oral histories from the aging descendants of the original founders.

1983: New offices are opened in New York and Knoxville, Tennessee.

Hunton & Williams became an international law firm with the opening of a Brussels office in 1989, and by the end of that decade, had grown to more than 350 lawyers in seven offices.

1992: The firm expands into Poland with a Warsaw branch.

Following the 1994 Republican victory that gave the GOP control of Congress, lobbying firms such as Hunton & Williams gained more clout.

The North Carolina Pork Council in 1999 hired Hunton & Williams to defend it in a national controversy concerning the growing number of factory hog farms.

The firm merged with Mayor Day Caldwell & Keeton in 2001, bringing on an additional 100 lawyers.

Later in 2016, the firm added more than 50 lawyers from intellectual property powerhouse Kenyon & Kenyon.