Jocelyn D. Francoeur is the Pro Bono and Community Service Partner in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP and is based in the Chicago office.
Jocelyn became the Firm's Pro Bono and Community Service Partner in 2014. In that capacity, Jocelyn works with the Pro Bono Committee and Firm leadership to develop new pro bono initiatives, encourage pro bono participation across the firm, establish and deepen relationships with pro bono referral agencies, and partner with Firm clients on pro bono and community service initiatives. She also works closely with junior lawyers to provide training, mentoring and guidance on pro bono matters. From 2012 to 2014, Jocelyn served as the Firm’s first Pro Bono Litigation Partner; in that role, she was responsible for cultivating and supervising pro bono litigation matters providing junior lawyers with the opportunity to develop core trial skills.
Since joining the Firm in 2004, Jocelyn has devoted thousands of hours to the representation of pro bono clients. She has first- and second-chaired trials and evidentiary hearings and successfully argued two criminal appeals at the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. In addition to her pro bono cases, Jocelyn has worked on a wide variety of civil and criminal matters in state and federal courts. Jocelyn has represented clients in cases involving contract disputes, business torts, products liability claims, trust disputes and securities fraud. She has defended clients against charges ranging from securities and health care fraud to environmental and immigration offenses, and she has counseled individuals and corporations facing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2009, she was part of a team that successfully obtained reversal in the U.S. Supreme Court of a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decision denying non-parties the right to enforce an arbitration agreement under the Federal Arbitration Act (Arthur Andersen LLP v. Carlisle, 129 S. Ct. 1896 (2009)).
Jocelyn is a member of the Firm's Pro Bono, Diversity, and Integrity and Compliance Committees, and she received the Firm's Pro Bono and Community Service Award in 2007. She was recognized as an Illinois Super Lawyers “Rising Star” in 2010-2012 and as a Benchmark Litigation “Future Star” in 2008-2010 and 2013-2015. In 2009, she was selected to join the Federal Defender Panel in the Northern District of Illinois. She is a member of the Association of Pro Bono Counsel and serves on the board of the Legal Aid Society.
Jocelyn previously served as a law clerk for the Honorable Margaret M. Morrow, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, and worked as an associate in the commercial litigation department of a large law firm in Milwaukee. Prior to law school, Jocelyn taught high school civics and history in Louisiana as a member of Teach for America. Jocelyn remains active in Teach For America's local efforts.
Jocelyn is a member of the Illinois and Wisconsin bars. She is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth and Seventh Circuits, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (Trial Bar), the Eastern District of Michigan and the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
