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McGlinchey Stafford art auctioned off as shuttered law firm continues liquidating assets 33%
By Stephanie Riegel0%
7/17/2026, 9:00:00 AM
Keywords: Hardwall
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Representativeness Heuristic, Negativity Bias, and Availability Heuristic, with Confirmation Bias as the most egregious example at 10.8% saturation with 76 hits. Analysis detected 706 faulty-reasoning hits from 702 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41.3% and a BS Rank of 33% (11,512 of 17,005 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 67.70% of the article peer group.
Nearly 75 works of art that once adorned the offices of McGlinchey Stafford were auctioned off Thursday, as the former law firm, which dissolved early this year after half a century in business, liquidates its assets to settle more than $13 million in debts.
The McGlinchey collection included dozens of oils, acrylics, and watercolors from some of the best-known Southern artists of the 20th century, as well as statues, pottery and antiques, according to court records included in the firms Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing.
Among the big-ticket items: an Ida Kohlmeyer oil, which sold for $55,000, and an Enrique Alferez sculpture that fetched $60,000 — more than double what bankruptcy court documents had listed as the estimated value of the bronze work, entitled “Woman in a Huipil.”
“We were real excited to see the interest in the pieces,” said Neal Auction Co.
President Michelle Leckert.
“It says a lot about the material.”
Altogether, if the McGlinchey pieces sold for their maximum estimated value they would fetch about $156,000 for the bankruptcy estate.
That's a tiny fraction of what the firm owes banks, landlords, vendors and former employees.
Still, the auction provided a window into the world of the one-time powerhouse firm, which had 17 offices in 11 states and 150 attorneys at the time of its shutdown, and was involved in some of the region’s most significant cases for decades.
Neither the firm nor the attorney representing the bankruptcy trustee responded to requests for comment.
Wind down process
McGlinchey Stafford stunned the local legal community in January by announcing that its equity members, a group of senior attorneys who owned the firm, had voted to dissolve.
A variety of factors contributed to the decision, including departures of several high-profile attorneys, delinquent collections, internal disagreements and steep costs in far flung offices.
In February, the firm filed for Chapter 7 in the U.S.
Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Court records filed at the time show the firm’s liabilities topped $13 million and included more than $2.5 million in bank debt, $6.5 million in office rent and more than $1.5 million in wage claims to employees.
Its $15.5 million in assets, though greater than its liabilities, included more than $9.4 million in accounts receivables or bills for services that have not yet been paid.
In the months since the filing, the court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of firm assets, Metairie attorney Wilbur “Bill” Babin, has been working with experts to locate and secure client files, clean out offices and negotiate with creditors, including banks and landlords, court documents show.
The process could take months or years.
Support of Southern artists
Many of the pieces in the collection, which moved with the firm in 2008 to the Pan American Life Building on Poydras Street, were purchased during that era, according to Neal Auction Co.
Director of Fine Art Marney Robinson.
The McGlinchey works, 74 lots in all, were among 365 pieces from a variety of private estates and institutional sources included in the auction, which featured Mid Century, Modern and Contemporary Art & Design.
An oil painting by George Schmidt, “Occulus of the Pantheon,” had garnered 14 bids as of Thursday afternoon.
The bidders had run up the price of the piece, estimated to be worth between $3,000 and $5,000 in court documents, to $7,500.
Most of the other works, including drawings and framed photographs, had more modest price tags, ranging from a few hundred dollars to around $1,000.
Ahead of the live bidding Thursday, Leckert said it was difficult to predict how much any of the works, whether from McGlinchey or any of the other sources, would bring in.
Online bidding for the pieces opened three weeks ago, and hundreds of art collectors and interested buyers from around the world had already started bidding before the live auction began.
“But the majority of the activity happens when the live auction opens,” Leckert said.
“So, while there is a lot of advanced bidding, at any given moments there are thousands of people online through these platforms watching.
We never know what is going to happen.”
Email Stephanie Riegel at stephanie.riegel@theadvocate.com.
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