Firm Overview

The foundation for Kitchens Law Firm was formed in June of 1967. Jim Kitchens was a new lawyer. He'd graduated from the Ole Miss Law School and he'd been admitted to the Mississippi Bar. Jim chose to return to his hometown, Crystal Springs, Mississippi, to practice law.

The following year Jim met a young Louisiana girl, Mary Tooke, and in August of 1968 they were married by her father, a Methodist minister. Of their five children, three became lawyers: Matt, Dan, and John. Matt graduated from law school and passed the Bar exam in 2002. His brothers, Dan and John, followed suit the next year. While John and Dan were in their senior year of law school, Matt clerked at the Mississippi Supreme Court in the judicial chambers of Honorable Oliver Diaz. The brothers joined their dad in law practice in 2003.

In 2008 Jim was elected to the Mississippi Supreme Court, where he served as one of the high court's nine justices for the next sixteen years. When their dad left the law firm at the beginning of 2009, and Matt was practicing law in North Carolina, John and Dan set up shop in Crystal Springs as Kitchens Law Firm, P. A. Eventually Matt returned to Mississippi and joined his brothers. And in January of 2025, Jim resumed working with his sons in his old hometown. So, lawyers named Kitchens have inhabited Crystal Springs for just under sixty years.

The non-attorney staff at the Kitchens firm is made up of highly trained legal professionals who work hard for the firm's clients and are unfailingly courteous and helpful. The staff includes one of the Kitchens daughters, Rebecca Kitchens Thornton, who serves as the firm's bookkeeper.

Although most of the firm's clients live in Mississippi, somewhere between the Gulf Coast and the Tennessee state line, we are privileged to represent many out-of-state clients, mostly people who have been injured while visiting Mississippi. And it is not unusual for our attorneys, from time to time, to litigate cases in other states.

The firm is housed in a unique and spacious building that for more than a century has been a Crystal Springs landmark. During the late 19th Century, when Crystal Springs was at the heart of Mississippi's vegetable-producing industry, the building began its long life as a packing shed, where fresh vegetables were crated and shipped from Crystal Springs. It was the most active of the several packing sheds, regularly shipping more than 500 boxcars of fresh vegetables annually.

In 1960 the shed was converted to a wholesale grocery warehouse by the parents of Jim Kitchens, Edith and Lloyd Kitchens. Mr. Kitchens also served for many years in the city government of Crystal Springs and was Mayor when he died. By appointment of the Board of Aldermen, Mrs. Kitchens succeed her late husband as Mayor, but did not seek election. Instead she continued her profession as a piano teacher until she retired at age 99.

Early in this century the Kitchens brothers---Matt, Dan, and John---purchased the dilapidated old packing shed/warehouse to save it from demolition, eventually converting it into law offices. Today this venerable old building, known in the Kitchens family as "The Wholesale," has undergone renovations to accommodate the law firm's needs, without detracting from the ancient building's historical significance.