John E. McElhinney is an American lawyer based in Winchester, Massachusetts, whose practice centers on real estate development, land use, and environmental permitting. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1985 and previously served as a partner at Ropes & Gray and as general counsel of Willowbend Development.
Education
McElhinney earned a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College in 1980, graduating magna cum laude, with a degree in economics and government. Dartmouth, founded in 1769 in Hanover, New Hampshire, is one of the nine colonial colleges and a member of the Ivy League.
He then studied at Harvard Law School, where he received the Juris Doctor cum laude in 1984. Founded in 1817 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard Law School is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States, and its graduates have entered practice across the country.
His admission to the Massachusetts bar in 1985 followed his legal education and marked his entry into the practice of law in the Commonwealth.
Career
McElhinney began his career in 1984 as an associate attorney in the real estate and environmental group of Rackemann, Sawyer & Brewster, a multi-service Boston law firm with more than a century of history. The firm later merged with Verrill Dana in 2022. During his years there he frequently led continuing legal education seminars, programs that help lawyers keep up with developments in their field, and published related materials.
In 1990 he joined Ropes & Gray as an attorney, and he later served as a partner in the firm. Founded in 1865 in Boston by John Codman Ropes and John Chipman Gray, both Harvard Law graduates, the firm developed bankruptcy, labor, and securities practices during the twentieth century. For much of his career there, McElhinney was responsible for the firm's mergers and acquisitions practice area. He also represented property owners in more than 100 cases involving Superfund and Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection hazardous waste sites. Superfund is the federal program, created by legislation in 1980, for cleaning up contaminated hazardous waste sites.
From 1998 to 2003 he was executive vice president and general counsel of Willowbend Development, LLC, a real estate development company based in Newton, Massachusetts. In that role he oversaw the legal and business side of acquisition, development, and finance activities connected with a real estate portfolio valued at about $2 billion.
He later founded the Law Office of Jack McElhinney in Winchester, Massachusetts, where he serves as principal attorney. His practice covers property acquisition, real estate development, land use and environmental permitting, and project financing. He has also maintained an office in Mashpee, on Cape Cod. He has handled multimillion-dollar projects for clients including Harvard University, the Cambridge institution founded in 1636, and Bain Capital, the Boston-based private equity firm. He is also a licensed Massachusetts real estate broker.
Membership
McElhinney is a member of the Boston Bar Association, a volunteer nonprofit organization in Boston. The modern association was created in 1876 as a reconstitution of the Suffolk County Bar Association, and it operates public service programs, including the Volunteer Lawyers Project, which provides pro bono civil legal assistance to low-income clients. He has been actively involved in the association in recent years.
He is also affiliated with the Real Estate Bar Association for Massachusetts, whose members include Massachusetts real estate practitioners, and with the Massachusetts Conveyancers Association.
Boston Bar Association
,
United States
Real Estate Bar Association for Massachusetts
,
United States
Massachusetts Conveyancers Association
,
United States
John E. McElhinney practice website
Practice website describing his Massachusetts real estate law practice, his offices in Winchester and Mashpee, and his professional affiliations.
