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around town
CONVERSATIONS
Bruce Fox and Herbert Slatery
Herbert Slatery III beganhiseight-yeartermasTennessee Attorney General and Reporter for the State of Tennessee on October 1, 2014. Previously, Slatery served as counsel to Governor Bill Haslam, a lifelong friend,
where he coordinated the legal affairs of the executive branch and helped develop and implement legislation. Before Slatery entered the public realm, he was in private prac- tice with Knoxville’s Egerton, McAfee, Armistead & Davis, serving as president from 1998 through 2007 and chairman from 2008 through January 2011.
Here, Bruce Fox, Cityview senior writer and partner and co-founder of Fox & Farley, talks with Slatery about his relationship with Haslam, the many challenges facing the attorney general’s office, and the future of Tennessee.
HS: Good question. When I took my first position in state government [as counsel to the Governor], I got this e-mail from my friend down in Memphis, and he said, “Congratulations on your new position. Now you just have one client—that’s the good news. The bad news is now you’ve got just one client. So you better make that one happy.” Then I get another e-mail from him when I got appointed
to the position of Attorney General—and now I have 6.5 million clients. I’m also accountable to the legislature—our bud- get is determined by the governor and the legislature—so they are my clients.
If you’re going to be a good lawyer, you want to be able to please all your clients and be responsive to them. We represent the state in every court and it’s a big task—there are 23 departments and each of them has a commissioner. We prob- ably send out 100 or 125 opinions each year—and most of those are requested by the legislature.
BF: There are some death penalty cases that are coming up in the next year or
so in Tennessee. What is the likelihood that we’re actually going to execute some death row inmates?
BRUCE FOX: How has your time thus far as Attorney General been different from your experience as a practicing attorney?
HERBERT SLATERY: The job now is dramatically different than private practice—where one often focuses on a particular area. Government practice is very broad. I now oversee 18 different areas of the law.
BF: I’m assuming in those 18 divisions you have department heads who know that specialty or that area of the law.
HS: I know the deputies, for the most part, in those divisions from my prior position with the governor, but I really didn’t have an idea of how
deep the divisions were and how good the lawyers are. They’re excel- lent lawyers and know their stuff.
BF: Have most of the lawyers in your office been there a long time or is there a high turnover rate?
HS: We do have turnover, but we
are able to attract young lawyers because we’re able to give them some pretty quick experience compared
to the private world. We also have a number of senior lawyers who have been in the department for 25 years or more.
BF: To whom is the Attorney General accountable?
50 CITYVIEWMAG.COM JULY AUGUST 2015