Several University of Virginia alumni will discuss their current and former roles as their states’ top attorney at the Law School on Wednesday.

The panel discussion, sponsored by the Mortimer Caplin Public Service Center, will be held at 5:15 p.m. in Caplin Pavilion.

Virginia Solicitor General Toby Heytens ’00, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine ’89 and Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III (College ’74) will talk about what it takes to lead a state’s legal agenda. Former Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler ’89, president of the National Association of Attorneys General, will moderate the panel.

Gansler is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Buckley Sandler. In addition to serving as attorney general of Maryland, he previously was Montgomery County’s state’s attorney and an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. His accomplishments include arguing and winning a unanimous decision before the U.S. Supreme Court in Maryland v. Shatzer.

Heytens became Virginia’s sixth solicitor general in February. Currently on leave from his role as a UVA Law professor, he previously served as co-director of the school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. He spent three years as an attorney with the U.S. Solicitor General’s Office, where he argued six cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Racine was sworn in as the first elected attorney general for the District of Columbia in 2015. He has worked at the D.C. Public Defender Service and served as associate White House counsel to President Bill Clinton. In private practice, he was elected managing partner of Venable and became the first African-American managing partner of a top-100 American law firm.

Slatery took office as Tennessee attorney general and state reporter in 2014 after being appointed by the Tennessee Supreme Court. Prior to that, he served as counsel to Gov. Bill Haslam, and was president and then chairman of Egerton, McAfee, Armistead & Davis in Knoxville. He earned a bachelor’s from UVA in 1974.

Ken Paxton ’91, attorney general of Texas, also has been invited to speak, but had not confirmed as of Friday. Vice Dean Leslie Kendrick ’06 will introduce the panel.

Founded in 1819, the University of Virginia School of Law is the second-oldest continuously operating law school in the nation. Consistently ranked among the top law schools, Virginia is a world-renowned training ground for distinguished lawyers and public servants, instilling in them a commitment to leadership, integrity and community service.

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