Our firm

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

McGlinchey is committed to fostering equity through diversity and inclusion in our firm and across our profession.

We know that representation of diverse voices empowers every member of the McGlinchey Family to do our best work and provides us with a rich and rewarding workplace. Our goal is to create a law firm culture that reflects the increasing diversity of the clients and communities we serve. We are proud of our deep roots in some of America’s most diverse cities, and we honor the broad range of backgrounds and perspectives that form the fabric of our firm. We celebrate our employees’ differences across race, gender, ethnicity, disability, and sexual orientation, and we strive to treat our lawyers and staff fairly.

We are committed to attracting, recruiting, mentoring, and promoting diverse attorneys and staff through involvement in minority job fairs and diversity clerkship programs, as well as our own Diversity 1L Scholars Program.

In 2021, McGlinchey’s new Managing Member, Michael Ferachi, launched the #McGlincheyForward initiative, designed to face the rapidly changing legal industry, our clients’ needs, and our internal operations for the next five years, and beyond. #McGlincheyForward focuses on 5 pillars: change, culture, empowerment, growth, and gratitude. The move towards improving equity within the firm is a major component of the #McGlincheyForward initiative.

The firm recently named our first Chief Diversity Officer, charged with two focus areas: internally, broadening the spectrum from which we identify and recruit candidates to the firm, and becoming Mansfield Certified (a distinction which verifies whether law firms have affirmatively considered at least 30% diverse candidates for leadership, equity partnership, formal client pitch opportunities, and senior lateral positions); and externally, intentionally hiring and patronizing diverse and equitable vendors and partners, making meaningful economic contributions to the local economies where we live and work.

In September of 2021, McGlinchey joined some 70 other law firms participating in the second iteration of the Midsize Mansfield Rule. The Midsize Mansfield certification process, modeled after the version for larger firms, has been fine-tuned to boost diversity in leadership for firms with smaller lawyer populations, single office locations, and leaner firm leadership structures. The certification period for the Midsize Mansfield cohort is 18 months to provide sufficient time for the participating firms to take action on hiring, promotion, and leadership transition activities. Learn more.

McGlinchey prides itself on its involvement with the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) since the organization’s founding in 2009. The firm is a 2021 recipient of LCLD’s highest honor, the Compass Award, and has been named a “Top Performer” by LCLD every year since 2018, a designation reserved for the most active LCLD Member Corporations and Law Firms. A McGlinchey attorney has participated in the LCLD Fellows program, which aims to identify, train, and advance the next generation of leaders in the legal profession, every year since 2010, and the firm sponsors an attorney each year to participate in the LCLD Pathfinders program for diverse, high-potential, early-career attorneys at LCLD Member organizations.

In 2021, the firm joined the LCLD’s Leaders at the Front program. Leaders at the Front is meant to capture the urgency and opportunity that the racial justice movement has created over the past year. By encouraging those in leadership positions to commit themselves to change, LCLD has urged its member organizations to create actionable pledges and plans to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the legal profession. Other organizations that have made pledges through the program include Capitol One, General Motors, and Fannie Mae.

LCLD Member

Leadership

Our commitment to diversity is reflected within the highest ranks of our firm:

65% of our firm employees are diverse

43% of our attorneys are diverse

50% of our Associates and Of Counsel are diverse

56% of our Senior Professional Leadership team are diverse

40% of our Policy Committee members are diverse

50% of our Office Managing Attorneys are diverse

The firm’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, comprised of attorneys and professionals across our footprint, oversees our efforts to recruit and retain diverse lawyers and professional staff and create an inclusive environment enabling all of our employees to succeed. The Committee holds monthly firm-wide meetings that are open to all lawyers for discussion of diverse topics and issues. The Committee also works closely with our Recruitment and Associate committees to enhance both the recruitment and retention of diverse lawyers.

Rudy Aguilar
Andrew Albritton
Megan Ben'Ary
Mag Bickford
Mikelle Bliss
Shanna Boughton
Alfred Carry
Farren Davis
Michael Ferachi
Kim Israel
Kelly Lipinski
Matt Manning
Deirdre McGlinchey
Heather Morse
Eliska Plunkett
Margeaux Roush
Chase Stoecker

Our attorneys and professional staff dedicate their time and talents to improving diversity outcomes in the legal profession as members and leaders within a number of diversity-related organizations, including:

  • Louis A. Martinet Legal Society, Inc.
  • National Bar Association
  • Federal Bar Association
  • Women’s Professional Council of New Orleans
  • Diversity Law Institute of the Litigation Counsel of America
  • Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals
  • New Orleans Legal Diversity Collaborative

We were a proud sponsor of the study underlying the provocative, landmark treatise, “Visible Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms,” published by the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession.

Programs and Affinity Groups

The firm’s Affinity Groups support our culture of inclusion:

Diversity Scholar Program

In 2008, we launched a Diversity Scholar Program for first-year law students. Recipients receive a paid summer clerkship in one of our offices, a scholarship to assist with the costs of books, tuitions, or other law school expenses, and mentorship throughout their law school careers. That program is now part of the 1L Scholars Program of the LCLD.

Uplift: McGlinchey Women's Initiative

In 2020, less than 40% of U.S. attorneys were women. According to the National Association of Women Lawyers, women comprise 47% of associates, and just 31% of non-equity partners and 21% of equity partners in U.S. firms. Seeking to move McGlinchey forward in understanding why women are not promoted and retained at the same rate as men in the legal profession, and working towards strategically correcting that fact, Uplift, McGlinchey Women's Initiative, was born.

Uplift’s mission is to be a home for McGlinchey’s women attorneys to convene, engage, empower, and advocate for each other in their work, in leadership, in their communities, and across the legal profession and industries the firm serves. Learn more. 

African American Affinity Group

McGlinchey’s African American Affinity Group is a network for the firm’s African American attorneys. Our mission is to help foster an equitable and inclusive workplace for all, by spotlighting unique issues that African American employees face within the workplace and in their greater communities and working to create solutions. In doing so, we work hand in hand with the DEI Committee to champion initiatives and programs that enhance diversity within the firm.

McGlinchey PRIDE, LGBTQ+ Resource Group

McGlinchey PRIDE, the firm's LGBTQ+ Resource Group, is a network for the firm’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and ally attorneys. The group’s mission is to create a home where McGlinchey’s LGBTQ+ attorneys and allies feel welcomed, affirmed, valued, and empowered - a rainbow WAVE. Learn more.

Lionel R. Collins Dinner

McGlinchey worked with several plaintiffs and with the support of organizations such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Martinet Society on the landmark 1991 cases Clark v. Roemer and Chisom v. Roemer, which resulted in the desegregation of Louisiana’s Trial, Appellate, and Supreme Courts.

For more than 20 years, McGlinchey has co-hosted the Lionel R. Collins Dinner, held each year in conjunction with the National Bar Association’s convention, to commemorate progress made by African-American judges since these significant cases.

Insights

McGlinchey News Release

McGlinchey Achieves Mansfield Diversity Certification

May 23, 2023

McGlinchey Stafford is pleased to announce that it has achieved Midsize Mansfield Certification. Following a rigorous 18-month process led by Diversity Lab from September 2021 to March 2023, this distinction certifies that McGlinchey aims to track, measure, and achieve diversity in law firm leadership. As participants in the second certification cohort, McGlinchey is among the first 100 firms to achieve this recognition to date in the U.S. and Canada.

McGlinchey News Release

McGlinchey Receives Top Honors in Legal Diversity for Third Time

December 28, 2022

McGlinchey is pleased to announce it has been recognized with the 2022 Top Performer and Compass Award designations by the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD). These distinctions illustrate McGlinchey’s commitment to LCLD’s mission of creating a truly diverse legal profession. The mid-size firm is honored alongside Am Law 100 and 200 firms and major international corporations as recipients of both recognitions.

View All