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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Having joined Cooley in 2008, Lavoie leads the global firm’s real estate practice group and manages its Reston office.

His practice centers on commercial real estate transactions, including buying, selling, developing and leasing office, industrial and retail properties. Lavoie represents landlords, tenants, lenders and borrowers in the Washington, D.C., area and the mid-Atlantic region. He’s been involved in data center leasing and development, as well as corporate headquarters projects.

Cooley has nearly 1,400 lawyers across 19 offices in the United States, Asia and Europe, and a total workforce of more than 3,000, including 58 attorneys in Virginia.

For more than a decade, Lavoie worked at Watt, Tieder, Hoffar & Fitzgerald, a McLean-based firm serving construction, surety and bankruptcy clients. He also worked as a senior associate handling site identification and lease negotiation for global real estate advisory firm Staubach, now part of Jones Lang LaSalle.

A graduate of the Catholic University of America and Georgetown University Law Center, Lavoie served on the transition team for former Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

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Kendrick became the 13th dean of the University of Virginia School of Law in 2024, replacing Risa Goluboff, who stepped down after eight years in the role.

A native of eastern Kentucky, Kendrick graduated from U.Va.’s law school in 2006 and became a member of the faculty two years later after clerking for former U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter and for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 2017, Kendrick, whose scholarship focuses on freedom of speech and torts, won U.Va.’s All-University Teaching Award. She was previously director of the school’s Center for the First Amendment and a special adviser on free expression and inquiry to U.Va.’s former provost.

Kendrick was the law school’s vice dean from 2017 to 2021. In the early days of the pandemic, she oversaw the effort to move 139 courses online over eight days. She received her master’s degree and doctorate in English literature as a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford.

U.Va.’s law school was ranked No. 4 in the nation in the 2025 U.S. News & World Report rankings.

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