Leila D’Aquin is Special Counsel with Leake & Andersson and has practiced and taught law for 34 years. A native New Orleanian, she earned her B.S. in Finance from LSU in 1983 and worked as a Financial Analyst at a major Louisiana bank prior to attending law school. As a law student at Loyola, she served as Comment Editor of the Loyola Law Review and was named Best Oral Advocate in the Regional Round of the 1987 National Moot Court Competition. Following graduation in 1988, she was a commercial litigation associate, first with the Montgomery Barnett firm in New Orleans and then with Haynes and Boone in Dallas, Texas. While practicing with those firms, she served as an adjunct faculty member at Loyola, teaching appellate Moot Court; was on the trial advocacy faculty at the Tulane, LSU, and Emory law schools; became a frequent team leader and faculty member for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy; and was for several years a director of the Louisiana Association of Defense Counsel Trial Academy. In 2001, she joined the faculty at the University of Wyoming College of Law, where she taught Federal Courts, Trial Practice, and Civil Procedure, coached the trial and appellate moot court teams, and organized university seminars and interfaith workshops on the death penalty.

In 2006, Leila returned to New Orleans, serving as Senior Counsel in the Litigation section of Entergy’s Legal Department until 2009 and then as Counsel with a large New Orleans firm, focusing her trial and appellate practice on commercial, product liability, pharmaceutical, medical device, and casualty cases. Her trial experience includes contract disputes; director and officer liability; appraisal, notarial, and medical malpractice; insurance coverage; securities fraud; ERISA; civil rights; product liability; and drug and device cases. She has tried cases before judges and juries in Louisiana and Texas and has appeared before courts in California, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wyoming. Leila has significant appellate experience, having handled writ applications and appeals in Louisiana and Texas state circuit courts, the Louisiana Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Texas, the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court.

Leila is a past president of the Loyola Law Alumni Association and a past member of the Loyola University Alumni Board. She has volunteered with schools and nonprofits in each community where she has lived and has served on boards and committees for many of those organizations. Presently, she serves on the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Chess Association and as a Delegate to the United States Chess Federation, promoting the educational value of chess and the use of chess to build community, serve senior citizens, and increase opportunities for under-represented segments of society.

Leila lives in Uptown New Orleans and enjoys theater, gardening, traveling, and participating in chess and backgammon tournaments with her son, Eli.