Professor Allison Eid will become one of Colorado's top legal officials as she begins her appointment as Colorado Solicitor General on August 1. "This is a great opportunity for me to gain a more practical perspective on the Constitutional Law that I teach," Eid said.Eid was appointed to the position by Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, an alumnus of the Law School, who called her "the perfect candidate." "The solicitor general's job is the think tank of an attorney general's office," said Suthers. "You want a top-notch legal mind, someone with some familiarity with the appellate process and how appellate judges think -- professional abilities that Allison has and that's why she is right for the job."As Solicitor General, Eid will argue cases before the Colorado Supreme Court and help set legal policy for the State of Colorado. Eid will take a leave of absence from the Law School and will return to teaching when her appointment ends in January of 2007.Eid joined the CU law faculty in 1998. She teaches Constitutional Law, Legislation, The Law of Politics, first-year Torts, and Advanced Torts. Before joining the faculty of the Law School, Eid clerked for the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She also practiced commercial and appellate litigation with the Denver office of Arnold & Porter, a Washington D.C.-based law firm.Eid graduated with High Honors in 1991 from The University of Chicago Law School, where she served as Articles Editor of The University of Chicago Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. After earning her bachelor's degree in American Studies (With Distinction and Phi Beta Kappa) from Stanford University in 1987, she served as a Special Assistant and Speechwriter to then-U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett. In 2002, President Bush appointed Eid to serve on the Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise, established by Congress in 1955 to prepare the History of the U.S. Supreme Court.