Dean of the University of Richmond School of Law since 2011, Perdue has blazed plenty of trails, as she is among the 42% of law school deans who are female. In 2024, Virginia Lawyers Weekly inducted Perdue into its Hall of Fame, and in March, she announced she would step down as dean at the end of the 2025-26 academic year. Perdue plans to remain on faculty as a professor of law following a sabbatical.

A graduate of Wellesley College and the Duke University School of Law, where she was editor-in-chief of its law journal, Perdue clerked for former Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy when he was a judge for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. She was an associate at Washington, D.C., firm Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells) before entering academia.

Prior to joining the University of Richmond, Perdue was an associate dean and professor at Georgetown University Law Center. She also served as president of the Association of American Law Schools for a one-year term in 2018.

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Promoted in 2022 to head the state bar, Rountree leads more than 90 employees who are responsible for licensing the state’s 50,000-plus lawyers. The bar is the administrative agency of the Supreme Court of Virginia, and it disciplines attorneys who violate the court’s rules of professional conduct and evaluates the state’s judges.

Rountree joined the bar as deputy executive director in 2019.

Prior to that, he practiced civil law and white-collar criminal defense at Williams Mullen and served as a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

After graduating from the University of Virginia, Rountree served as a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy.

Rountree earned his law degree from William & Mary and holds a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College. He is a board member for the Legal Services Corporation of Virginia, which funds and oversees statewide legal aid, and the Virginia Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program.

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In addition to serving as Gentry Locke’s managing partner, Marston is president of the Virginia State Bar, a post he will hold through June 2026. A graduate of the University of Virginia and George Mason University’s law school, Marston joined Gentry Locke in 1994 and specializes in construction law, including contract negotiations, payment disputes and insurance matters.

He has a lengthy history of leadership in the state bar. He currently leads the bar’s executive committee and formerly served on the budget and finance committee. In July, Marston rotated off the board for the Virginia Transportation Construction Alliance, and he completed his three-year presidency of the Roanoke Regional Partnership board in 2024.

WHAT PEOPLE WOULD BE SURPRISED TO LEARN ABOUT ME: I grew up in a very rural part of Virginia — Red House, on the border of Charlotte and Appomattox counties. Both sets of grandparents were tobacco farmers. This continued with my father, who not only farmed but, along with my mother, ran a grocery store in Red House.

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Paulk has led Hirschler since 2018, when she became the first female president of the now 79-year-old firm. With 86 attorneys in offices in Fredericksburg, Richmond and Tysons, it is the state’s seventh-largest law firm. Paulk also heads Hirschler’s litigation section.

After graduating from Mary Washington College (now the University of Mary Washington) with a degree in theater in 1992, Paulk took a job as a paralegal. She loved the work and later enrolled at the University of Richmond’s law school.

Paulk is also ambitious outside of work.

In 2013, she became the 85th person and 30th woman to achieve the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming, which requires swimming around the island of Manhattan, across the English Channel and across the Catalina Channel. In 2017, she became the first person ever to complete a Double Triple Crown, and in 2019, she completed a Triple Triple.

In 2023, Paulk swam 34 miles across Lake Gaston, which straddles the North Carolina and Virginia borders, in 19 hours, 39 minutes and 8 seconds. In 2024, she was inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame.

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Parks joined Hunton & Williams, Hunton Andrews Kurth’s predecessor, after graduating from law school at the University of Virginia in 1988.

He has served as the chairman of the state’s third largest law firm’s executive committee since 2022.

With 35 years of experience under his belt, Parks’ practice focuses on corporate transactions, including business process and information technology outsourcing, e-commerce, licensing, manufacturing and joint ventures. Parks has also negotiated dozens of large-scale commercial and technology transactions worth billions of dollars for multinational companies.

Parks, who majored in chemistry and English literature as a U.Va. undergrad, previously was co-head of the firm’s corporate team, its retail and consumer products industry group and its global technology, outsourcing and privacy practice group.

He serves as president of the Richmond Symphony Foundation board and was active on the Metropolitan Richmond Sports Backers board for more than a decade, as well as previously chairing the CenterStage Foundation.

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