Democrat Steve Bullock and Republican Tim Fox are finalists in a uniquely public job interview: Both want to be Montana's next top lawyer, the attorney general.

Voters will make the final selection on Election Day. The IR State Bureau looked at each candidate's legal resume, interviewed people who worked with them and asked each man to explain how his career sets him apart.

Fox of Helena has been licensed to practice law for 21 years, although he hasn't worked as an attorney for all that time. He has spent his entire career in Montana, representing mostly corporations like insurance companies, banks and mining companies, although he also worked for a year representing poor Billings residents accused of misdemeanor crimes in city court.

As a lawyer with the state Department of Environmental Quality, Fox led

Montana's first criminal prosecution against a citizen accused of breaking state environmental laws.

Fox's career has included some setbacks: He was once asked to leave a job and was laid off from another.

Bullock, also of Helena, has been licensed to practice law for 14 years and has worked as an attorney ever since. His career twice brought him to large, East Coat firms where he represented national and international corporations.

He also has worked extensively in Montana, and as a Department of Justice attorney he successfully defended Montana's stream-access law before the state's highest court. As a private attorney, Bullock represented a group of Montana cities seeking to buy NorthWestern Energy earlier this decade, and represents unions, companies and trade groups.

Bullock twice left jobs at high-powered law firms, first returning to Montana to care for his sick father in the 1990s and then returning home for good to open his own law firm.

Tim Fox

Fox, 51, graduated from the University of Montana Law School in 1987 and started his legal career as a one-year clerk for Justice L.C. Gulbrandson on the Montana Supreme Court.

Then, he moved to Billings and took a job as an associate with Moulton Bellingham, P.C., a large firm with a wide variety of mostly corporate clients. He defended insurance companies, represented oil and gas companies and banks, including some bill-collection work, and helped banks understand industry regulations.

After two years, the firm lost some business, Fox said, and he was let go.

"I can certainly empathize with those who have had setbacks in their careers," he said.

Gerald Murphy, a senior partner at the firm today, worked with Fox when he was at Moulton Bellingham in the late 1980s. He remembers Fox as "a very good attorney."

In September 1988, Fox became environmental coordinator for the Montana Board of Oil and Gas Conservation, a state agency headquartered in Billings. Fox was hired to re-write the board's rules on oil and gas permitting, said Tom Richmond, the board's administrator and Fox's boss at the time

"He did a pretty solid job," Richmond said. "Those rules have been in place for 15 years."

But Fox and Richmond eventually butted heads, and Richmond asked him to resign.

Fox wanted to publish the results of a draft study examining oil and gas wastes; Richmond wanted to wait, believing the draft results were inaccurate, which they later turned out to be.

After leaving the Board of Oil and Gas Conservation in 1993, Fox hung his shingle in Billings, opening a one-man law practice.

He obtained a public-defender contract with the city of Billings and represented over 465 people in city court. Those clients were accused of committing misdemeanor crimes, like drunken driving.

"It was quite an amazing learning curve," Fox said, adding that he was often the only visitor his clients had in jail.

Fox also did some criminal defense work in district court and represented small businesses.

In March 1996, then-Gov. Marc Racicot, a Republican, appointed Fox to be a special deputy attorney general assigned to the Department of Environmental Quality. There, Fox focused mainly on mining law, said Mark Simonich, the agency's former director and Fox's boss at the time, including the large bankruptcy of a gold mining company.

"Tim did a very good job for me," Simonich said.

Fox also led the state's investigation into David Allen Phillips, the first person to be criminally charged for breaking environmental law. Phillips was convicted of a state misdemeanor and a federal felony.

For six months in 1998, Fox also was acting head of the Planning, Prevention and Assistance Division at DEQ, the branch that oversees many non-regulatory duties of the department.

Fox said he applied for the permanent position, but "it went to a more qualified civil servant."

In 1999, Fox left state government to become head lawyer for Mountain West Bank, a Helena-based bank with branches in central and western Montana. He handled most of the bank's legal needs, from giving advice about employment law to handling foreclosures and collections and helping the bank managers interpret banking laws.

Mountain West officials declined to talk about Fox's time at the bank, saying the bank does not engage in political activity.

After four years, Fox left the bank and took a job at the established Helena law firm where he currently works, Gough, Shanahan, Johnson and Waterman.

There, Fox has a mix of clients. He said he works mostly with banks, real estate developers and corporations, and also handles corporate bankruptcies, foreclosures, collections, mining and environmental law.

Fox said some of his most rewarding work is the work he does for free, representing kids with unfit parents and others who can't afford a lawyer.

Fox said his career has uniquely prepared him for the job. He said he the only man in the race with criminal justice experience, that he has more years in the legal profession than his opponent, and understands the realities of starting and running a business in Montana.

Fox has taken three cases to the Montana Supreme Court and has argued cases before federal bankruptcy court, U.S. District Court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Steve Bullock

Bullock graduated in 1994 with honors from Columbia Law School in New York City, ranked as one of the best law schools in the country. Out of college, he went to work at Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Towbridge in Washington D.C., where he'd previously interned. An enormous firm with 350 attorneys, Shaw, Pittman mostly handled commercial litigation, or large companies suing each other, he said. As an associate just out of school, Bullock handled smaller pieces of those large, complex cases.

David Fiske, a partner at the firm who supervised Bullock, said he was a "very, very bright, good young lawyer."

"I've seen a lot of young lawyers," Fiske added. "I frankly thought he had a very good career ahead of him. I thoroughly enjoyed working with him."

After a year and a half, Bullock took a job with another large firm, Dewey Ballantine in New York City. The firm also handled a lot of large, national companies suing each other and Bullock handled pieces of these cases. In late 1996, Bullock moved back to Helena to care for his dying father. He took an appointed position as the only lawyer in the secretary of state's office under Democrat Mike Cooney. As the sole attorney in the office, Cooney said, Bullock handled everything from helping Montana businesses register with the state to handling all citizen ballot initiatives and proposed constitutional amendments.

"He was extraordinarily smart and hard-working," Cooney said.

The next year, Attorney General Joe Mazurek, a Democrat, appointed Bullock his chief deputy, the second in command at the Department of Justice.

Mazurek, who is treasurer for Bullock's campaign, said Bullock played a central role in defending the state's 1985 stream-access law, which allows the public access to almost all rivers and streams up to the high water mark, regardless of who owns the land abutting the water.

A conservative Colorado think-tank had sued over the law, saying it violated private property rights. Bullock took the state's response, Mazurek said, "and made it a better document, made sure it worked."

Then, Bullock successfully argued the case before the Montana Supreme Court. The law has never again been challenged.

Bullock also worked closely with the Legislature, helping shepherd bills the Justice Department supported, like the state's numerical speed limit, through the lawmaking process.

After four years at the Justice Department, Bullock and his wife had started a family and left so he could take a job with a large Washington, D.C., firm to pay off his student debt. He worked two jobs there, one as an attorney for Steptoe and Johnson, handling large corporate clients, and another as an assistant law professor at George Washington Law School, ranked in the top 25 law schools nationally.

At Steptoe, Bullock handled a wide variety of cases, including one in which he represented a privately owned bridge in Detroit in negotiations with Detroit-born rap star Eminem, who wanted to shoot a music video on the bridge.

Roger Warin, who worked over Bullock at the firm, said he was an "exceptional lawyer."

"We were sad to see him go," he said. "We tried to talk him out of it."

Bullock then moved home a final time, opening his own one-man firm in 2005. Bullock Law Firm has a wide list of clients, including Washington Corp., owner of Montana Rail Link and a mine in Butte, labor unions and the Helena Building Industry Association. He's representing the association in a case pending before the Montana Supreme Court about county subdivision requirements.

"He's good," said Elaine Marcille, executive director of the Helena trade group. "He's very attentive, good follow-through and he's smart."

Bullock has had four cases before the Montana Supreme Court. He has argued in district courts throughout the state, as well as several bankruptcy courts, federal appeals courts and the National Labor Relations Board.

He said his experience gives him the edge. As second-in-command at Department of Justice under Mazurek, Bullock said he knows well how the agency works and has already shown he's up to the job, successfully defending one of Montana's most cherished laws, stream access.

His experience at large, out-of-state firms is also valuable, he added. When big businesses sue Montana, Bullock said, they often retain a local lawyer, but the real legal work is done by lawyers at out-of-state firms like the kind has worked at, he said. He said he knows how they tick.