As state attorneys general take on a growing role in shaping national legal fights, former state solicitors general Michael Mongan and Kevin Gallagher are helping clients understand how those offices actually operate and how states coordinate across party lines.

On “The Growing Influence of State Solicitors General,” an episode of the Stanford Legal podcast, Mongan and Gallagher join host Professor Pam Karlan to trace how the role has evolved from a handful of offices in the 1980s to the 44 states that have one today. Drawing on their own service, Mongan as California’s Solicitor General and Gallagher as Virginia’s, they discuss multistate litigation, bipartisan coalitions, and how states work together when their legal interests align.

The conversation examines how widely the job varies from state to state, and why state solicitors general often practice in circuits far from home. Gallagher describes the split between offices “on the front lines of some of these culture issues” and those focused on briefs and oral advocacy, and recounts assembling a rare 50-state brief on veterans’ education benefits.

Mongan explains that states tend to coordinate on a bipartisan basis in areas where they “share sovereign interests as states and those interests are genuinely threatened.”

Listen to the full podcast episode here.