In sworn testimony released to the public Tuesday, Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz ’83 defended her eligibility to run for attorney general despite never having tried a case in court in her life.

Bysiewicz was questioned about her legal credentials during a March 31 deposition in a lawsuit her own office filed to determine whether she meets a state law requiring candidates for attorney general to have served 10 years of “active practice” in the state.

[ydn-legacy-photo-inline id=”7046″ ]

Bysiewicz said she was as qualified to run for attorney general as Blumenthal was when he first sought the office in 1991.

“I’m a corporate lawyer, not a litigator,” she said.

While Bysiewicz has been registered as a lawyer for 24 years, she has only practiced law in Connecticut for a total of six years. She has said she hopes that her 11 years as secretary of the state will be counted towards the “active practice” requirement, but she acknowledged during questioning from the state Republican Party’s lawyer Eliot Gersten that the position did not require that she be a lawyer.

During the testimony, Bysiewicz conceded that she had never sat at the counsel table in a courtroom, been a witness in a case, or observed a courtroom proceeding since her first year at University of Connecticut Law School in 1985.

A transcript of the testimony, which continued Monday and Tuesday, was released by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s LAW ’73 office after Bysiewicz’s attorney withdrew a motion blocking public disclosure. A video of the deposition is scheduled to be released tomorrow.

Final arguments in the case are scheduled for April 20.