Becoming a teacher and lawyer has been on Kristi W. Richard’s radar from a young age. Growing up with an attorney father in criminal and family law, she learned what areas of the legal system she wanted to avoid.
“I like to be there for the marriages of the businesses, not the divorces,” says Richard, a transactional and regulatory attorney and partner at McGlinchey Stafford law firm.
After graduating from law school and earning her MBA in 2009 during the Great Recession, Richard says she stumbled into insurance regulatory work. The mergers and acquisitions she intended to pursue weren’t as active during the economic downturn, so she was asked to fill the void in the insurance regulatory space.
Early in her career, she was brought onto calls with clients such as General Motors and other automobile manufacturers, advising them on the ins and outs of insurance and automobile ancillary product regulation.
Her willingness to pivot and a deep-rooted passion for law and business led her to be on the legal team for multimillion-dollar transactions such as the merger between Eatel and RTC in 2019, guide GM on how to introduce an ancillary product on a national scale, and work with lawmakers to craft special legislation for a $3.2 billion health care initiative aimed at improving health and welfare in Louisiana.
After years of hard work as one of the youngest partners at her firm, the 42-year-old mother of two achieved one of her proudest accomplishments: becoming an equity partner at McGlinchey Stafford in 2024.
When asked about her life’s purpose, Richard says it is to leave her community better than she found it—and she’s doing just that. In 2021, she co-led the relaunch of Uplift: McGlinchey Women’s Initiative to provide empowering environments for the firm’s women attorneys to support one another. She also co-founded the Powerful Voices – Women in Leadership series in 2019, a program to engage professional women in business and legal communities in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Richard’s commitment to women, underserved communities and education goes beyond the legal industry. She is also a longtime board member and the secretary at YWCA Greater Baton Rouge, where she played a key role in developing and licensing the Community Bail Fund, a transformative initiative that helps indigent, nonviolent individuals secure bail, ensuring they don’t remain incarcerated due to financial hardship.
“There are so many women who are stuck in situations because they don’t have the power to change their current situation,’ Richard says. “If you could help even the smallest thing, so that they can free up the time to work on themselves, it empowers women on any level to change their situations and be mobile. My point is never to give someone something that they don’t deserve. It’s to put them in a position where they can have the skills and the capacity to be considered for those positions.”
The Opelousas native served on the Junior League of Baton Rouge’s executive management team and board of directors until 2020 and has since remained involved as a sustainer, chairing the legal ad hoc committee. At the 2024 Dancing with Big Buddy competition, she raised nearly $20,000 to support under-resourced youth with mentoring, academic and social support. This year, she took on a new role as a board member of the Friends of LSU AgCenter Botanic Gardens at Burden.
Time management is essential for Richard. With a color-coded calendar, she juggles her law practice, teaching and motherhood. After tucking in her 8-year-old and 10-year-old children for bed, she spends the evenings grading her LSU E. J. Ourso College of Business students’ assignments and reviewing coursework.
She began teaching sports law at LSU in 2012 as an adjunct professor before transitioning to a full-time instructor in 2022. After more than five years in sports law, she moved into business law, where she developed the online LSU business law course and teaches it to hundreds of students in person and online.
Her favorite way to unwind from her hectic schedule is by spending time with her children and traveling. She enjoys going on trips and immersing in different cultures with her family. Richard is just two continents away from reaching her travel goal of visiting all seven continents. She aims to travel to Africa and Antarctica before she turns 50.
“As St. Augustine once said, ‘The world is a book, and if you don’t travel, you only read one page,’” Richard says.
