Legal Mainstays: Sands Anderson

 

Cited as the oldest continuously operating business in Virginia, the law firm Sands Anderson has been a downtown Richmond fixture since before the Civil War. 

Formerly known as Sands and Sands; Sands, Marks and Miller; Sands, Williams and Lightfoot; and a few other names along the way, it can trace its roots back to an office in the Goddin Building, which was the first structure to be incinerated when the city burned in the last days of the Civil War in 1865.

Hanging outside of today's Richmond board room of Sands Anderson are portraits of those who have made significant contributions to the firm, the most prominent being founder Alexander Hamilton Sands, who packed a lot of lives into his 59 years: lawyer, author, Baptist minister and moonlighting literary editor, among others.

My Richmond Magazine feature article on the history of this illustrious firm charts the practice's zig-zag history, its influence on the region, and its growth. Read "Legal Mainstays" right here.

And for more on Sands Anderson, go here. 

(Portrait photo of firm founder Alexander Hamilton Sands courtesy Sands Anderson)