Ms. Degan is the former office managing shareholder of Baker Donelson's New Orleans and Mandeville offices, and served on the Firm's board of directors for six years. She also chaired Baker Donelson's Business Litigation Group for nine years. Ms. Degan has more than thirty-five years of experience helping businesses and business people resolve their disputes through trials, arbitrations, appeals and negotiations. She handles breach of contract disputes, all manner of bank litigation, oil and gas royalty and environmental damage cases, property disputes, general business torts, and shareholder and securities litigation. She also has extensive experience defending companies' officers and directors against breach of duty allegations.
Ms. Degan has been licensed in Louisiana (including all state and federal courts) since 1983 and the U.S. Supreme Court since 1993. She has tried cases to judges and juries in state and federal court, and has argued on multiple occasions before the U. S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and numerous state appellate courts.
In addition to her work on the boards of local bar associations, law schools, and charitable organizations, Ms. Degan has held nationally significant positions in the American Bar Association. From 2014 – 2015, she served as chair of the ABA Section of Litigation, overseeing its service to the group's 60,000 members. From 2016 – 2017, Ms. Degan chaired the ABA's nonpartisan Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which assists the White House and United States Senate by vetting federal judicial nominees for integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament. In this capacity, in 2017, Ms. Degan testified before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee in connection with the nomination of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.
Ms. Degan is the author of numerous articles and scholarly works regarding commercial litigation, mineral law and evidence, and has taught Courts in a Federal System at Loyola College of Law. She is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly works to clarify, modernize and otherwise improve the law, and has spoken on substantive and procedural topics, trial practice and leadership skills at ABA, Louisiana and New Orleans Bar Association meetings, the LSU Mineral Law Institute, Tulane University Law School, Loyola College of Law, and The University of New Orleans.
Ms. Degan received her J.D. from Loyola University in 1983, magna cum laude, and served as the Articles Editor for the Loyola Law Review. She obtained her B.A., cum laude, from the University of New Orleans in 1979.