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Hilary Tompkins was confirmed as solicitor of the Department of the Interior in the summer of 2009. From 2003-2008, she was deputy and chief counsel to the New Mexico governor. Before joining the state of New Mexico, Tompkins was an attorney in a national law firm devoted to representing Native American interests. Prior to her work in Indian law, she served as a special assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York. During the Clinton administration, Tompkins was an honors progam trial lawyer in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she handled civil prosecutions in environmental cases nationwide. She also served as a law clerk for the Navajo Nation Supreme Court in Window Rock, Arizona. Before becoming a lawyer, Tompkins worked for the Navajo Nation Department of Justice as a tribal court advocate. An enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, Tompkins received a BA from Dartmouth College and JD from Stanford University, where she was associate editor of the Stanford Law Review.
NR&E: Thank you, Solicitor Tompkins, for this interview and on behalf of the editorial board oiNR&E magazine, I appreciate it.
TOMPKINS: My pleasure.
NR&E: For those of our readership who may not be familiar with the solicitor's office, can you describe it? What do you do? How many lawyers?
TOMPKINS: Sure. We are the legal office for the entire department. We're general counsels. We have about 340 lawyers. About half of them are located here in D.C., and the other half are out across the country in regional offices. We have eight regional offices. And we provide legal advice to all of the bureaus in the department, and we're specialized. We're natural resources specialists, Indian affairs specialists, as well as general law. We provide advice not only to the bureaus and offices, but also to the deputy secretary and the secretary of the interior. So we're a very large legal department with highly specialized legal expertise.
NR&E: Who's your client?
TOMPKINS: The Department of the Interior is our client, and we always have a unified perspective on all issues. I'm joking. (laughter) But the client is the Department of the Interior, and we ultimately are the legal conscience of the department. That's how...