1L Scholarship Program

McGlinchey welcomes first-year law students to apply for its 2024 LCLD 1L Scholar Clerkship.

The Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) is an organization committed to ensuring a legal profession in which all talent thrives in an inclusive environment. McGlinchey is a long-standing member of LCLD and is committed to its principles.

McGlinchey’s LCLD 1L Scholar clerkships represent our firm’s long-term commitment to creating and maintaining an inclusive workplace that respects individual differences and values the contributions of all individuals within the legal profession. From our inception, we challenged the status quo and earned a reputation as a progressive, merit-based business that rewards individual achievement and potential. Our LCLD 1L Scholar Program is just one aspect of our commitment to attracting, mentoring, developing, and promoting attorneys with diverse experiences and perspectives, starting at the beginning of a lawyer’s career in the first year of law school.

About our Summer Associate Program

LCLD 1L Scholars fully participate in our Summer Associate Program, which provides a hands-on experience and a snapshot into life and work at McGlinchey.

Our program offers an enriching and enjoyable experience, with a balance of collaborative, challenging projects, firmwide training, and social events designed to give a feel for our culture and atmosphere. As part of our program, you will have the opportunity to work closely with our attorneys on challenging legal assignments and projects of importance to our clients while gaining insight into the practice of law and experiencing the everyday life of our firm.

From legal research projects to drafting memos, summer associates receive stimulating and substantive work assignments, as well as opportunities to attend depositions and court hearings, trials, client meetings, and more.

To help summer associates see the business side of the law, we also offer programming designed to help law students succeed as lawyers, such as how to use social media to market yourself, legal writing, and associate panels.

To us, a healthy organization is one filled with people who work well together and enjoy each other’s company too. We strive to exceed our clients’ expectations, give back to our communities, and enjoy life with our colleagues, families, and friends. We welcome you to join us.

LCLD 1L Scholar Program Highlights

Summer Associate Position: Recipients will receive paid summer clerkships in our Baton Rouge or Houston offices. The award recipients will also be eligible for consideration for a 2L clerkship the following summer.

Leadership Council On Legal Diversity (LCLD): The 1L Diversity Scholars will have the opportunity to participate in the 2024 1L LCLD Scholars Virtual Experience, which will kick off on June 4, 2024, and run throughout the summer. The Experience offers an innovative curriculum developed exclusively for LCLD that focuses on leadership, relationship building, and career development strategies.

Scholarship: A $5,000 scholarship to assist with the costs of books, tuition, or other law school expenses will be distributed to the scholar’s law school at the beginning of the fall 2024 semester.

Application Requirements

Candidates must be enrolled as first-year law students in good standing, full-time at an accredited law school, demonstrate strong leadership skills, and have excellent academic credentials. Application materials must be submitted no later than March 4, 2024.

Please include in your application: resume, law school transcript (first-semester grades required), and a personal statement of approximately 500 words describing your academic, professional and life experiences. In addition to academic achievement, excellent writing skills, and interpersonal skills, we consider factors such as resilience and individual perspectives. For example, obstacles or challenges you have faced, how you overcame them, what you learned from the experience, and how your experience would contribute to McGlinchey’s commitment to an inclusive environment. 

In the event you do not have your grades by the application deadline, please notify us in your application when your school anticipates releasing grades. Once you receive a transcript, please send it to recruiting@mcglinchey.com with the subject line – “LCLD Scholar Grades.”

If you have any questions about the program, please contact Margeaux Roush.