As the year draws to a close, we are reflecting on the anniversary of the founding of Mouledoux, Bland, Legrand & Brackett. 20 years ago, Andre J. Mouledoux, Wilton E. Bland, III, Georges M. Legrand and Alan G. Brackett joined forces to start a law firm that would handle maritime, workers’ compensation and insurance defense work. They offered five other attorneys the opportunity to join them, and all said yes.
“We started our firm with two primary objectives,” says Alan. “First and foremost, to create a great place to work that values our employees as well as our clients. I used to dread driving to work when I was with a prior firm because it was such an oppressive place. For the past twenty years, I’ve come in each day with a sense of excitement.
Next, we wanted to create a truly client focused firm, where our clients trust us to handle their legal matters with enthusiasm, dedication and integrity. We’ve always been very fortunate to represent high caliber people and companies that share our outlook—to vigorously represent their cause but to do so ethically and professionally.”
Since then, the firm has almost tripled in size, and eight of the nine attorneys are still with MBLB. We have developed and expanded our workers’ compensation practice, which is now nationwide, and we also handle a lot of state workers’ compensation matters statewide. The addition of our “Wheels” team, Gerard Dragna and C. Michael “Mike” Parks, has truly expanded our transportation work.
As Georges says, “We are always looking for opportunities, especially with new practice groups and exceptional attorneys, that provide greater value to the firm, our current clients and potential new clients. Within the past several years, we were able to add a new practice group which caters to trucking and transportation companies and their insurers, over a multi-state area, and it has been a great fit.”
When we began this journey, we didn’t know if any clients would follow us to our new firm, but many did and we still represent them today. We didn’t know if we would grow, but we have.
Our continued success is in no small measure due to the hard work of our next generation of attorneys. We were delighted to have Gerard, Mike, Robert Popich and Patrick Babin join the firm as equity members in 2017.
“We didn’t know if we’d be setting the groundwork for a firm that would extend beyond our ‘first generation,’ but now our second generation has begun,” says Alan. “We’re both fortunate and proud of the firm we’ve created, because we’ve achieved what we set out to do and our success is proof that being good and doing good set the stage for achievement.”