A 38-year resident of La Plata County, Rep. McLachlan has been both prosecutor and La Plata County Attorney. In 1999, then-Attorney General Ken Salazar appointed Rep. McLachlan as Colorado’s Solicitor General, the state’s leading trial attorney. It was in this role that Rep. McLachlan successfully argued the constitutionality of Colorado’s women’s health clinic shield law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In addition to practicing law locally, Rep. McLachlan has been active in the Durango community for decades. A past president of the Durango Rotary Club, his civic efforts include serving on the board of the Fred Harmon Museum, as trustee of the Durango Hundred Club — a charity dedicated to helping injured police officers, firefighters and their families — and on the Southern Ute Tribe-State of Colorado Environmental Control Commission.

Ensuring fairness, accountability and equality in our judicial system has been a decades-long passion for McLachlan, who has worked to improve the practice of law and the judiciary at the local, state and national levels — most recently as chairman of the judicial performance commission for the Sixth Judicial District.

The son of an Air Force officer, McLachlan left the University of Nebraska in 1965 to enlist in the Marine Corps, serving in Vietnam. After his honorable discharge in 1967, McLachlan attended Southern Colorado State University in Pueblo, then earned his law degree from the University of Arizona in 1973. He clerked for Colorado Supreme Court Justice Edward C. Day.

Rep. McLachlan and his wife, Barbara, have two children, Brian and Kate. He is a devoted angler and writer, and has built a successful small business around his law practice.