William Pratt is a Partner at Kelley Kronenberg in the First-Party Property Insurance Defense Division, bringing nearly four decades of trial and litigation experience to clients facing hurricane, wind, hail, fire, and tornado claims. He is AV Rated by Martindale-Hubbell, a distinction he has maintained since 1995 in recognition of his legal ability and ethical standards.

Most recently, William served as a managing attorney at a high-volume first-party property insurance plaintiff’s firm, where he grew the practice from four to ten attorneys and resolved numerous hurricane-related claims through mediation, primarily litigating in federal court. He also served of counsel to a firm concentrating on medical malpractice, representing injury and wrongful death clients through Louisiana’s medical review panel process. Earlier in his career, William built an extensive trial practice handling personal injury, trucking, vehicle accident, and premises liability matters. At one point in his career, he was trying cases before juries approximately once every three months and conducting numerous mediations each month, alongside an active motion practice. He founded and went on to lead a nine-attorney firm with a practice spanning bankruptcy, employment law, medical malpractice defense, insurance defense, real estate, and plaintiff’s litigation, until the firm was disbanded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

William also served of counsel to a litigation practice group handling lender liability defense and debtor-creditor disputes arising from the 2008 financial and real estate collapse, and worked in-house for a consumer finance company, where he oversaw regulatory compliance, collections, and bankruptcy matters across more than twenty states. Throughout his career, William has also maintained a trial and mediation practice of his own, handling personal injury, trucking, vehicle accident, and premises liability matters, as well as general civil, business, and real estate litigation, and is a certified mediator with the Louisiana State Bar.

William earned his Bachelor of Arts in History from Tulane University. He went on to earn his Juris Doctor, also from Tulane University.

In a public office appointment, William served as Custodian of Notarial Archives for the State of Louisiana under Governor Mike Foster, a role he held for eight years. During his tenure, he managed a state agency of more than thirty employees and a two-million-dollar annual budget, building a surplus of one-point-six million dollars from an initial balance of nine thousand dollars, all while expanding the agency’s services. He oversaw the intake, preservation, and digitization of New Orleans real estate records, mortgages, conveyances, and other property filings dating back to the early 1700s, and relocated the agency’s historic holdings to establish the Notarial Archives Research Center. He also testified before the Louisiana State Judiciary Committee on several occasions to advance legislation modernizing the state’s notary laws and the financing structure of the Office of the Notarial Archives.