Chester County Leadership: Maureen McBride, Partner at Lamb McErlane

This leadership profile of Maureen McBride first appeared on VISTA Today in August 2021.

Maureen McBride, a Partner at Lamb McErlane, spoke with VISTA Today about growing up in Bucks County as one of eight children in her family; the valuable lessons she learned in some of her earlier, part-time jobs; why she chose to attend King’s College in Wilkes-Barre; and what eventually prompted her to attend Villanova Law School.

McBride also discussed what drew her to Lamb McErlane and the people who saw promise in her, as well as the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for her practice.

Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

I’m the third of eight children.?I was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Feasterville, Bucks County. Feasterville is a small town, and we lived in two different areas – we moved when I was in the fourth grade from one side of town to the other.

What did your parents do?

My father was a vice president of a manufacturing company, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom during most of my childhood. She started working full-time when I went to college.

What memories do you have growing up in Feasterville?

Feasterville is just outside of Philadelphia in Bucks County and, back then, was a bit of a sleepy town. It was much more suburbia than it was city-like. It was a nice place to grow up. There were a ton of kids in my neighborhood who I played with, and I am still friends with many of them today.

We had a pool, so we spent a lot of time swimming. In the summer we went to Stone Harbor or other shore locations for vacation. My mother is a history buff, so we also made a lot of trips in our family station wagon to historic places like Williamsburg and Monticello. We visited a lot of battlefields that I did not appreciate at that age.

Did you play any sports?

I played a lot of sports, including basketball and softball. I wasn’t too good at them; I was purely a “recreational” athlete. My mother, much more than my father, is a huge sports fan.

My brothers and sisters all played sports, too, so we spent a lot of time at fields around our area.

Did you have any part-time jobs over the years?

I always babysat for families in the neighborhood, as well as for my brothers and sisters, and when I turned sixteen, I began working at a jewelry store part-time after school and on weekends.

From there, I always had interesting jobs. I worked in retail for GNC, and at a straw factory for two summers. I sold cookware in a Cutco-type of job. It was a lot of cold calling people and sales, but there were incentives to win free trips to the Bahamas, so it was a great job.

I still think about some of the things I learned in the training sessions. I learned a lot about negotiating and asking for the sale. One of the things I learned was to stay away from negative people because they will only bring you down. Even in my practice today, I still think about those lessons. I also learned not to be afraid of objections, as well as how to address them, or pre-empt them. When I have to argue cases, I think about that training, too. Those experiences taught me how to interact confidently and professionally and were a nice training ground for representing the interests of my client with lawyers and before judges.

Why did you work so many jobs?

We all worked part-time jobs as soon as we could.?I was raised in that work ethic. It was important. I worked to save money for college. We gave our parents most of the money we made to help pay for college.?

You discovered who you were in those part-time jobs.

I did. You don’t really know what you are capable of doing until you do it.?When I sold cookware, much of what I did involved “sales pitches” in people’s homes.?We were given a prospectus and went through it, and then asked for the sale. I can’t even tell you how many times people said yes, and I’m still amazed today! I exceeded the sales goals in my twenties and earned three trips to the Bahamas with a group of college kids.

How did your perceptions change?

I think in a big family there’s always a little rivalry so I suspect that helped me look for ways to distinguish myself once I began working. Sales is a great outlet for that. Sales is competitive, and I was always trying to reach my sales goals to earn the extra rewards – like the trips to the Bahamas. I really enjoyed the challenge and the thrill of closing the sales. It was very different from what my siblings were doing at the time.

What kind of music were you listening to back then?

I was very into music and went to a lot of concerts at the Spectrum. My first concert was at JFK with 100,000 people for the Yes concert with Peter Frampton. We were there from 2:00 in the afternoon to 2:00 in the morning. It was a great time!

Did you have a favorite group?

I had many favorite groups over the years. I’ve seen Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Paul McCartney and even the Grateful Dead a couple of times.

Where did you go to college, Maureen?

I attended King’s College in Wilkes-Barre.?I wanted to be a Communications major and King’s had a great program for that.?King’s was perfect because it was far enough away from home, but close enough to return when I wanted to.?It had the major I wanted, and it made my parents happy to see me continue my education at a Catholic school.

Was King’s a good choice for you?

It was the best. The benefit of going to a small school is that you’re able to make friends easily and maintain those friendships. I’m still friends with a lot of my classmates and still talk to them today.

As an English and Communications major, most of my professors were PhD’s, who were very well-educated and read. There were small class sizes with great exposure to professors with great depth and experience.

What did you do after college?

After I graduated, I worked at a cable magazine for a start-up company called TVSM. At the time, it was competing with T.V. Guide to capture cable subscribers. It was a great company to work for because they hired a lot of college graduates, and about two hundred of us started at or about the same time. We had a lot of fun together.

I left there and went to work at National Liberty Insurance as a copywriter. I enjoyed that.?Interestingly, while I only worked at National Liberty for one year, I met my husband Michael, as well as a lot of good friends whom I still see today, so it was a very important year in my life! At that point, I decided to apply to law school.

Why law?

Even as a young girl, I was very intrigued by the Watergate hearings. Later, in college, I was fortunate enough to attend Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s confirmation hearings in D.C.

In college, I also did a semester on Capitol Hill in D.C. so I was always around lawyers and other officials. I roomed with a friend, who is now a lawyer in Montgomery County. She sent me the application to take the LSATs. We both always wanted to be lawyers and agreed to apply together. We both got accepted, borrowed a lot of money and took a chance on ourselves.

If my friend hadn’t done that, who knows how my life would have turned out. I always tell my three children, if you’re ever on the fence about whether you should do something or encourage someone, think about the difference you can make in the trajectory of their lives.

Was Villanova a good fit?

Read Maureen McBride's entire leadership profile on VISTA Today.