Oh, sorry.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the pre-agenda interview for Tuesday, February tenth, two thousand twenty-six for the city solicitor, where clerk please read the title of the bill.

Bill Twenty One, resolution appointing Lisa Zeidner Marcus as City Solicitor.

And for the record, we are currently joined by Councilman Strasberger as well as Councilman Wilson.

Others may be joining us shortly.

We will first begin with the oath that has to be given to all directors.

Do you, Solicitor Marcus, solemnly affirm that the testimony you are about to give before this council shall be the truth, the whole truth, or nothing but the truth, and do you further affirm that you will and faith you will faithfully discharge the duties of the solicitor's office to which you have been nominated.

Thank you.

With that, I believe you have an intro that you want to provide to members before we go into questions.

Yes, thank you, Council President.

Honorable members of City Council, good afternoon.

And I loved my job.

Cardamone of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then for the Honorable Richard Conway Casey of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

In 2007, I was accepted to the U.S.

Department of Justice's honors program, and I joined the civil division in the federal programs branch.

I represented federal agencies and officials.

I worked on high-profile litigation involving constitutional claims, administrative procedure act claims, and other challenges to statutes, policies, and agency decisions.

As I mentioned, I spent 18 years there.

Just a few weeks ago, I began my work as acting city solicitor.

I want to briefly share with you my vision for the law department.

Pittsburgh deserves the best.

That means providing excellent legal analysis and generating creative ideas to accomplish the city's objectives within that legal framework.

That means using the tools available to us to pursue the city's interests through affirmative litigation.

And that means elevating the work that we do and the manner in which we do it to the next level so that other cities look to Pittsburgh as a model for how a law department is supposed to operate.

These goals are absolutely attainable.

I've spent a lot of time recently getting to know the attorneys and staff in the department.

And I have been deeply impressed by their knowledge and dedication.

I also see enormous potential for more.

It starts with a relentless commitment to the law and to our client, the city of Pittsburgh.

From that foundation, we must pursue innovative legal strategies, embrace new technology, and push to fulfill this department this department's potential.

Pittsburgh deserves nothing less.

Thank you again for the chance to speak with you today.

I would be happy to answer your questions.

Thank you.

And we'll just start at the top and work our way down.

Councilman Schlossberger.

Thank you very much, Mr.

President.

And thank you, Acting Solicitor Marcus, for your opening remarks and for your willingness to serve in this position.

And you know, judging by the first few meetings that we've had together and your resume and your presentation, we're we're certainly fortunate to have you in this role and seeking this role.

And I agree that we we have talent and institutional memory and history in the law department that's really valuable.

So I guess starting there, we um we always have room for, I know that every department always seeks more resources, more staff, more talent, more ability to you know attract more talent, and I know that's also true in the law department, and unfortunately, we're in a very lean year this year, and so we're we're we're going to probably need to approach that kind of building back in future years.

But that said, what do you in the time that you spent in the law department so far?

What do you see are the biggest opportunities for if we could for bolstering the department internally to be able to avoid some of the really costly outside council contracts that we have?

Are there certain issue areas, or if you don't even have that at the ready in the moment, um, so this a simple sort of yes or no answer could be could be helpful.

But are you seeing those kinds of opportunities already that are already apparent within the law department?

I'm I am still in the process of analyzing, you know, where we're going to, if we're gonna bring in more people in and where those people will serve.

Um I see opportunities to grow the department within the budget that we have.

Uh I'm working on, for example, this summer having some modifications for our summer law clerk program to make it more attractive and to use it as uh a tool to recruit.

Um as to your question about avoiding outside counsel fees.

I I think that there I will be looking at ways that we can improve our processes within the law department to make sure that the staff are talking to each other that it's not completely siloed and that we use the expertise that we have in-house.

So if there's some new litigation, uh I want our litigators to be talking to our municipal lawyers about the background of that litigation and you know within their area of the within the the areas that the municipal lawyers work on.

And the flip go the flip is true also.

I want our municipal lawyers to be engaging more with our litigators because they are the ones who are often advising on on you know the first line advice being provided to city agencies and to council, and it should be informed by litigation risk.

Uh so there are some ways to improve the processes to have achieve better outcomes with our litigation without needing to fully rely on outside counsel.

Great.

Um as council, we uh you know, we we have um a certain number of staff per office and certain some talented staff who work for the hallway at large.

Um yet um none of us is uh is a board you know, a bar certified attorney.

So um when when it comes to drafting legislation, writing legislation, or getting a formal legal opinion, we rely heavily on the law department.

Um have you figured out quite what your approach will be for working with council, nine different council offices as we seek to, you know, ideally come to you before legislation is drafted or in the process of drafting legislation to be able to, you know, in addition to the voluminous work that you already have in the law department to be able to meet the needs of each of the council offices for either a quick turnaround opinion on something that is before us and that is pr presently at council, sort of like you know, a defense, but also on offense and sort of tackling the the drafting of legislation of how you'll approach that and um I guess on um ensuring that um well I guess there's a the second part of that is acknowledging acknowledging that sometimes council members introduce legislation that they that push the boundaries, right?