More than two weeks after McGlinchey Stafford’s leaders voted to dissolve the law firm after more than 50 years in business, the firm’s wind down plans are rapidly taking shape.
McGlinchey’s New Orleans office, its largest, will shut down on March 31 with layoffs for its more than 100 employees beginning on March 16, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification that the firm sent last week to the Louisiana Workforce Commission notifying the agency of the pending job losses.
Those in the firm’s other offices will be out of work sooner. In a virtual meeting with employees on Jan. 15, McGlinchey Managing Partner Michael Ferachi said the last day of work for everyone outside of New Orleans will be Jan. 30, which also will be the firm’s last day to practice law.
“Thank you for your patience, resilience and grit over the past week,” Ferachi told employees, according to an audio recording of the meeting. “I have been very impressed how you cared for and supported each other. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
The Pan Am Life building at 601 Poydras Street, where McGlinchey Stafford’s home office has been located since 2008, can be seen behind a passing street car and commuter in New Orleans, in this file photo from May 26, 2017.
Per federal law, companies are required to give 60 days advance notice and file letters if they are laying off 100 employees or more. Only McGlinchey’s New Orleans office is large enough to meet the threshold.
McGlinchey’s equity members, a group of partners that own the firm, voted on Jan. 5 to shut down the mid-sized law firm, once a powerhouse in the region, sending shockwaves across Louisiana’s legal community.
A variety of factors contributed to the decision, including the recent departure of several high-profile attorneys with the firm, delinquent collections, internal disagreements and steep overhead costs in far flung offices, according to sources familiar with the situation and the firm’s public statement.
In the days since, individual lawyers and groups of attorneys within McGlinchey have left for other firms, according to recent announcements.
Dozens, however, remain, according to the notice filed with the state. The document shows that the New Orleans office alone, which is located on the 12th floor of the Pan American Life Center on Poydras Street, has 111 employees, including 34 attorneys.
The attorneys include 2 equity members, 17 non-equity members, 11 associates and 4 of-counsel.
The office also has 8 secretaries, 6 paralegals, 4 e-billing coordinators and more than 40 others in accounting, IT, finance, compliance and back-office departments.
Ferachi and the firm declined to comment.
More departures
At the time McGlinchey announced its vote to dissolve, the firm had around 160 attorneys and hundreds of support staff in 18 offices around the country from Seattle to Boston, though its New Orleans and Baton Rouge offices were its largest.
In the wake of the announcement, a prominent group of attorneys from the Baton Rouge office moved their corporate and real estate practice, including nine attorneys and four staffers, to Adams and Reese.
On Friday, a 36-person team, including 19 attorneys from several of McGlinchey’s offices outside of Louisiana, said they would be joining Womble, Bond, Dickinson, a transatlantic firm with 1,300 attorneys and home offices in London and Baltimore, according to an announcement from the firm.
AM Law, an industry trade publication, reported Jan. 16 that talks between the group, headed by a partner in McGlinchey’s Cleveland office, and Womble began on Dec. 8 and concluded Dec. 26, less than 10 days before the vote to dissolve.
Around the same time, McGlinchey lost four attorneys from its corporate litigation group in New Orleans to Jones Walker. Another four attorneys from the firm’s Washington D.C and Florida offices that specialize in consumer financial services defense announced their departure for Chicago-based Hinshaw.
In remarks earlier this month, Ferachi acknowledged the firm had experienced several high profile departures but said no single move had contributed to the decision to dissolve.
Those remaining at the firm have less than 10 days now, according to Ferachi’s remarks last week. At the meeting, he said the firm’s goal was to continue meeting payroll “as long as we can,” though he acknowledged this would “require ongoing bank approval.”
“In service of that goal, however, there is not room in the budget to issue retroactive 2025 bonuses or 2026 salary increases,” said Ferachi, which he called “a difficult decision.”
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