Utah Attorney General's 2016 CLE Conference

Utah Attorney General's Office

Biography

Laura Lockhart received her B.A. in Biology from the University of Utah, and her J.D. from Yale Law School. After two years as a staff attorney for the Department of Health’s Environment Division (now the Department of Environmental Quality), Laura joined the Attorney General’s Office in 1989 in the Environment Division. She now works in the Environment Section of the Environment & Health Division, primarily on issues related to radiation control, water pollution, and administrative law. She has also provided back-up for the Government Records Counsel for the Attorney General’s Office.

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Laura was on the committee that was originally tasked with writing GRAMA in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She was also on the 2011 GRAMA Working Group that formed after the 2011 passage and repeal of HB 477.

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Lonny Pehrson

Raised an Army brat, Lonny lived all over the country as a child before moving to Hawaii where he completed high school.  He earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Brigham Young University in 1998 and his law degree from the University of Utah in 2002.  Lonny spent 11 years as a Staff Attorney with the United States District Court in Utah, primarily handling prisoner civil rights and habeas corpus cases.  In 2013, he transferred to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, where he clerked for District Judges Ewing Werlein, Jr. and Melinda Harmon.  Lonny returned to Utah in 2015 and joined the Attorney General’s Office in May 2016.

 

Lonny succeeds Blaine Ferguson as Government Records Counsel, a position created in 2014 due to drastic increases in the number and complexity of records requests received by the Office.  His role is to ensure that the Office meets its obligations under GRAMA and to serve as a central resource for the Office on GRAMA matters.  As part of his responsibilities, Lonny serves as Chair of the Office's GRAMA Committee, which develops policies and coordinates the Office’s GRAMA compliance efforts.

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David Sonnenreich has been practicing law in Utah for three decades. He has spent nearly half that time as a member of the Utah Attorney General’s Office, in two stints. In the 1990s he was a white collar crime prosecutor and Commerce Section chief. Since returning to the office in 2007, David has had various assignments. He is currently in the Tax Division, where he works as an antitrust attorney. He is also the Deputy Attorney General for Special Projects. In that role, among other duties, he leads the team that created and administers the nation’s first White Collar Crime Offender Registry, and he is leading the teams that are transitioning our office’s email system and implementing our first office-wide case management system. With regard to records management, he holds the incredibly officious sounding title of Chief Administrative Officer for Compliance with the Utah Public Records Management Act by the Office of the Attorney General for the State of Utah.

Materials