Like many local law firms, Bean, Kinney & Korman began as a modest group of young attorneys looking to build their professional practices near the local courthouse. Among them was David B. Kinney, who in 1959 joined together with three other lawyers to start an enterprise that has grown and prospered for over the past 50 years to become one of the area’s leading law firms. Along the way, a law student named James W. Korman was hired as a clerk and later as an associate attorney, and a 1970s merger brought to the firm one of Northern Virginia’s premier attorneys (and later president of the Virginia Bar Association), L. Lee Bean. During these first two decades, the firm built a typical general practice, representing local individuals and businesses in real estate transactions, litigation, wills, divorces and corporate matters.