Biography
Judge Rachel Theora McGuckian is an officer of the International Bar Association’s Professional Ethics Committee and has presented on legal ethics issues at conferences in North America, Europe, South America, Asia and Africa. She graduated from the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Baltimore School of Law, magna cum laude, and served as judicial law clerk to the Honorable Deborah K. Chasanow of the United States District Court for Maryland, Southern Division. Prior to being appointed to the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Maryland (USA) in 2022, Judge McGuckian spent 29 years in private practice, including the past 25 with Miles & Stockbridge, representing businesses including public companies, financial institutions, real estate developers, government contractors and family enterprises, and individual clients in divorce, custody, real estate, tax and contested estate litigation. Judge McGuckian also represented indigent individuals in criminal cases. She served on the Maryland State Board of Elections (2009-2014) and the Maryland State Ethics Commission (2014-2015). Judge McGuckian received the highest honors available to a trial lawyer in North America upon her election to the American College of Trial Lawyers, a select group limited to the top 1% of the lawyers in each state. She was named by her peers as a “Super Lawyer” every year since 2009, and repeatedly named one of the Top 100 Super Lawyers in Maryland and in Washington, D.C., one of the Top 50 Women Super Lawyers, one of the Best Lawyers in America, and to Bethesda Magazine’s Top Attorneys List. Judge McGuckian is an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and has served as a faculty member at the National Institute of Trial Advocacy’s Georgetown University Law Center program for two decades.
