In the Media

McGlinchey Launches Revamped Women’s Initiative

July 12, 2021

The following article was published on Law360 on Monday, July 12, 2021, and is reprinted with permission.

McGlinchey Stafford PLLC has launched a revamped women’s initiative, saying it will be an expansion of previous efforts to help its women attorneys become more involved in leadership and increase their visibility when pursuing business relationships.

The new initiative, called Uplift, was announced Friday, and co-chair Kristi Richard told Law360 Pulse on Monday that it differs from McGlinchey Stafford’s previous women’s initiative in that it goes beyond networking to also focus on long-term aspects such as retention, recruitment, and leadership promotions.

“It’s not going to just be getting together with a bottle of wine, but more in-depth offerings, providing training that both research and our internal surveys have suggested would be helpful for the ladies here in getting more business relationships, more comfortable with people at the firm and ultimately wanting to stay for the long haul,” she said.

Uplift comes as part of the McGlinchey Stafford’s #McGlincheyForward initiative, which Richard said comes as the New Orleans-based firm is in a leadership transition, having appointed a new managing member at the end of 2020.

“It’s an opportunity for McGlinchey’s women attorneys to learn about each other and find our voices a little bit more,” she said. “We’ve had a women’s initiative before, but with the new leadership at the firm, it was a right time to really look at the issues with retention of women in law firms and finding ways to strategically correct it over time.”

According to the firm, more than 40 women attorneys across McGlinchey Stafford’s 15 offices are part of the Uplift program, and as of 2021 more than 40% of its office managing partners are women.

“Culture and empowerment are two of the primary tenets of our #McGlincheyForward initiative,” Managing Partner Michael Ferachi said in a statement. “I know the firm’s women attorneys, through Uplift, will be instrumental in helping us live those values, which will not only benefit the future of our firm, but our client service and the practice of law as well.”

Even with the recent increases of women in leadership positions, Richard said there’s still room for improvement, such as in committee involvement. She also said that one of the main goals of Uplift is to help support McGlinchey Stafford’s objective to become Mansfield certified by 2023, which currently requires at least 30% of a firm’s leadership to be from historically excluded groups.

“We’re laying the groundwork for placing more women as practice group leaders and office managing members which will ultimately go up to other policy committees,” Richard said. “It’s not going to happen overnight, but we know where we need to work on and those are the things we’re working on to ultimately get more women to the equity member and policy committee level.”

When it comes to recruitment and retention, Richard said the things Uplift is doing include creating a LinkedIn page to highlight the achievements of McGlinchey Stafford’s women attorneys and emphasizing community and business involvement in the cities the firm has offices in.

“When a female attorney is looking at McGlinchey, she can see that they’re standing behind these women and letting people do all this stuff,” she said. “For example, we’ve recently changed our parental leave policy, and it’s these kinds of things that need the exposure so we can actually prove what we say and show that we’re standing behind our women attorneys.”