Akin Gump announced that former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) have joined the firm’s public law and policy practice in Washington, D.C. Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen joins as a senior advisor, while Congressman Smith joins the firm as a senior consultant.
Rep. Ros-Lehtinen has served in public office for 36 years, including nearly three decades as the U.S. representative from Florida’s 27th Congressional District, and was the first Hispanic woman ever to serve in the Florida House, the Florida Senate and the U.S. Congress. Among the positions she held during her tenure in Congress were Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC)—the only woman, to date, to hold that position—and Chair of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa.
Rep. Smith served for more than three decades in Congress as the representative for the 21st Congressional District of Texas, most recently serving as Chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which has jurisdiction over NASA, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He also served as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, with jurisdiction over intellectual property, administrative law and immigration.
About Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen became the first Cuban-American elected to Congress when she won a special election in 1989 to fill the seat held by the late Claude Pepper. In addition to her leadership roles on the HFAC and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen also served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
As a member of the Florida legislature in the 1980s, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen sponsored legislation for the Florida Prepaid College Program, which is now the largest prepaid college tuition program in the United States.
About Lamar Smith
As Chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith oversaw roughly $40 billion in budgets for agencies with a primary focus on research and development. While in Congress, he also served as Chairman of both the Judiciary and Ethics committees, making him the only recent member of Congress to have chaired three committees. In addition, Rep. Smith served as a senior member of the Homeland Security Committee.
Before entering Congress, Rep. Smith served as a Texas state representative and as a county commissioner in San Antonio.
Rep. Smith was ranked the most effective member of the House in the 112th Congress (2011-2012) in a study jointly conducted by the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University. According to the same study, he was ranked in the top 10 percent in effectiveness in the last eight Republican Congresses. He also has been named Policymaker of the Year by POLITICO for his work on patent reform legislation.