Meet Your New DC Bar President-Elect
Yesterday, the DC Bar announced who'll be the next president-elect of the 100,000-member organization.
The results are in.... Congratulations to Ullico general counsel Patrick McGlone. This morning we caught up with Pat, who will officially become president-elect on June 15. He'll hold the position for a year before transitioning to DC Bar president.
He's thrilled with the result, says Pat. It's "pleasing and humbling in a way, to see how many people came out to support my campaign." A former DC Bar secretary, he's also currently DC Bar Foundation treasurer, Council for Court Excellence vice president, and an ABA fellow.
Since 2002, Pat's been with the insurance and investment services company Ullico Inc, and is SVP, GC and chief compliance officer. The company (whose lead subsidiary, the Union Labor Life Insurance Co, turns 90 next year) is exploring a number of new product and business initiatives, he tells us, so it has a lot of transactional and regulatory work as it looks ahead and tries to enter into new relationships. Before Ullico, he'd been in-house at US Office Products Co and Mobil Corp, and earlier, with FDIC and Hunton & Williams.
What are his plans? There are a couple initiatives he'll start working on now to prepare for his year as president.
1) With the DC Bar's leadership in promoting access to justice, one of Pat's focuses is enlisting more corporate counsel to support legal services organizations and take on pro bono work. The Association of Corporate Counsel - National Capital Region (formerly known as WMACCA) has been active in this area. Because he is connected to the in-house community, ACC-NCR and the DC Bar, Pat wants to see if he can get more in-house colleagues involved in supporting legal aid organizations and pro bono.
2) Lawyers have a natural ability to provide a civic education to young people because of our training experience, says Pat, and that might be an untapped opportunity for practicing lawyers to bolster school systems' efforts to teach youth about the rule of law, the responsibilities of citizenship and participation in democracy. He'd like to develop an initiative that'll make some progress, building on curriculum materials developed a few years ago by the ABA. "My fear is that the current political campaigns aren't increasing young people's willingness to be engaged citizens, and I think Bar members can contribute to persuading youth of the importance of civic involvement."
As president-elect, he'll also support the initiatives of DC Bar president and UDC Law associate dean Annamaria Steward, who takes over the post from Sidley Austin partner Tim Webster. The formal transitions happen June 15 at the DC Bar's Celebration of Leadership at the Mayflower, when new officers are welcomed and DC Court of Appeals Chief Judge Eric Washington performs the swearing in.
In the busy life of a lawyer there isn't much spare time, but Pat tells us he made it out to dinner last night with his partner of 16 years, Kevin Taylor, to celebrate his election. (The two are photographed above at a DC Bar Foundation event.)
In addition, "I want to take a moment to compliment my opponent, [McDermott partner] Guy Collier. He has a really impressive background as a lawyer, and his level of commitment to pro bono activities is unparalleled. I hold him in very high regard." Both ran a very cordial campaign, Pat says, and it was a very gratifying experience.
"Some of the most thoughtful, most interesting, and most fun people I've ever worked with are people I've met through my bar engagement or my other work in the community," says Pat. "I encourage young lawyers to identify whatever issues they feel passionately about, and whatever those are, there's going to be an organization out there that will benefit from their work."
When Pat does have free time, he enjoys theater, opera and motorcycle-riding. (A lot of senior folks in his company are big sports fans, so when they make a sports analogy, he goes with a theater or opera analogy: they talk about getting something to the end zone, he talks about the final curtain falling.) He recently attended the Shakespeare Theatre Company's opening night of The Taming of the Shrew and bought a subscription to the next season of the Washington National Opera.
Pat's also a motorcycle buff who owns three bikes. We featured this photograph of him on a racetrack in Alabama in Bisnow's "Daredevil Lawyers" issue.
This Sunday, he's flying down to Miami to pick up a BMW (a K1600 GT for those in the know), and take it on a scenic ride back up to DC over the next week. He's previously done a couple of motorcycle tours around the Alps, and aspires to one day (maybe when his schedule isn't quite as full), drive a motorcycle across the US and back.
