Newsmakers: Jackson Walker’s Scott McElhaney to take helm of Dallas Bar Association in 2014

Dallas Bar Association members elected Jackson Walker partner Scott McElhaney (pictured) their president-elect at the DBA’s annual meeting Nov. 2.

"I was gratified to be chosen to lead the bar association," McElhaney says.

McElhaney says he will assume his duties as the president-elect in 2013 and will spend the year planning some of his projects and initiatives for 2014, when he will become the 105^th president of the DBA. He says he also will spend 2013 assisting Jones Day partner Sally Crawford of Dallas, who will take office as DBA's president that year.

A member of the DBA Board of Directors since 2006, McElhaney says he was elected the board's chairman in 2010. He says he chaired the DBA's 2009-2010 Campaign for Equal Access to Justice, which is a major fund-raising effort for the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program that matches lawyers with indigent clients needing legal services.

McElhaney says he is a 1992 graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was the managing editor for the Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review.

In 1992, he served as a law clerk for then-U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders of the Northern District of Texas in Dallas, McElhaney says.  He says that in 1993-1994, he clerked for then-5^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Irving Goldberg.

McElhaney says he joined Jackson Walker 11 years ago and focuses his practice on commercial litigation and employment law.

-- Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.