Lesli Harris is the newly elected City Council Member for New Orleans’ District B (Uptown, CBD, Central City, Irish Channel and parts of Mid-City). She maintains a law practice at Kelly, Hart, Pitre focusing primarily on commercial litigation, entertainment and intellectual property law. Before running for City Council, Lesli was Chief of Staff and Executive Counsel at Loyola University New Orleans to its first woman President Tania Tetlow. Lesli was the second Black woman to ever become partner at Stone, Pigman, Walther, Wittmann one of New Orleans most prestigious law firms. 

Lesli has been recognized by New Orleans City Business Leader in Law in 2013, 2017, and 2021 and was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2021. She is recognized by Chambers USA, Louisiana Super Lawyers, Top Lawyer and is ranked as AV Preeminent by Martindale-Hubble. 

Lesli received her B.A. from the University of Virginia, graduating in 1997 with an Art History degree, her J.D. from Tulane Law School, graduating in 2002 cum laude, and an LL.M. in Trade Regulation from New York University School of Law, graduating in 2018.

LL:  You’ve gone through a lot of career changes over the years.  Tell me about those and what motivates you to look for new opportunities. 

I do not have a boring career trajectory, that’s for sure. I grew up in rural Ohio and was fortunate to receive an excellent public education and to be pushed by my mother to attend UVA for my undergraduate degree. My mom worked for the federal government for all of career, and when I was young, I thought that I would also work for the same employer until I retired. That obviously hasn’t been the case.

Looking back now, I am someone who relishes change, learning new things, and challenging myself. I don’t like to be bored. I came to New Orleans in 1999 to attend Tulane. Not many people know this, but before attending law school, I was a writer and assistant art director for an advertising company in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond has changed a lot, however, when I lived there, on Martin Luther King Day (at that time in Virginia it was called “Lee, Jackson, King Day”), men dressed as confederate soldiers would march around the confederate statues that lined Monument Avenue. For a Black woman, it was offensive and disconcerting. I had to get out of there, so I applied for and got a scholarship to Tulane Law. I thought “why not? Let’s see what happens.” 

It’s that same “why not” and “let’s see what happens” that motivated me to participate in the LSBA’s Diversity Pipeline Program, even though at the time, I did not have top grades. During that program, I met Wayne Lee and Sandra Diggs Miller who were recruiting for Stone Pigman. I am fortunate (there’s that word again) to still call Wayne my mentor and Sandra a friend. They pushed me to excel in law school and even now. 

When I got to Stone Pigman in 2002, Sandra had left for Entergy so Wayne and I were the only Black attorneys. You remember that even then, women were essentially required to wear skirts to court. Being a double minority that space was sometimes uncomfortable – not necessarily from my co-workers at Stone – but from other (mostly male) attorneys who thought I was the assistant or court reporter. As you and I both know, that still happens to women in the profession. But, I was fortunate to have mentors like Judge Dana Douglas, Sharonda Williams, Mary Dumestre, and Carmelite Bertaut (to name a few) to guide me through those situations. 

I was practicing at Stone when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Afterward, like many attorneys in New Orleans, I litigated storm damage cases. While I absolutely love litigation, I did not love insurance defense cases. What I do love is art, artists, and creatives. I also realized that I really loved my intellectual property law classes and the few IP cases that I worked on at Stone. So, I again said “why not” and applied to an LL.M. program at NYU’s law school to focus on intellectual property law. I took a two-year sabbatical from Stone, got my LL.M. degree, lived and made great friends in Harlem, and worked at NBCUniversal for a year. I was fortunate to later be hired by NBCUniversal to represent them in various IP-related litigation matters once I returned to Stone and while at Kelly Hart, my current law firm. 

LL:  How did you get to Loyola and City Council?

In 2018, a friend who knows everyone in New Orleans told me that newly appointed Loyola President Tania Tetlow was looking for a Chief of Staff. She is such a smart, accomplished, and engaging woman. I knew that I could learn a lot from her. At that time, Loyola had financial woes and I knew several students and faculty who had left because they were worried that the school wouldn’t be there in the future. But I knew that I could do some good and that I would learn new skills while there.   

Going to Loyola involved some deep soul searching because I loved my Stone Pigman family, my clients, and legal practice. Taking the position, would require me to resign my partnership at Stone – a significant accomplishment that I thought really defined me and my position in the legal community. It would require me to step off the career path that I thought I should have. So it was not one of those “why not?” moments.  But once I made the decision to leave Stone, it became a “let’s see what happens” moment. And, I was fortunate enough to be hired by Loulan Pitre at Kelly Hart Pitre to become Of Counsel so that I could continue my legal practice and maintain my clients while working at Loyola. 

Loyola was full of other challenges that I won’t describe here. One of the biggest, of course, was the COVID pandemic. President Tetlow asked me to lead COVID operations when the pandemic hit New Orleans and I did so with a great team supporting me. I decided in winter 2021 to leave Loyola. To be honest, I needed some rest after the sprint that was COVID policymaking and response. But I also knew that I was leaving Loyola in a better place that when I came, including assembling an excellent team to continue COVID operations.

Soon after, my friend Richard Perque suggested that I run for New Orleans City Council. Elected political office was not something that I had ever really contemplated. But living in this City had become hard – with torn up streets and crime and lack of true economic opportunity. So the decision to run really was “why not? Let’s see what happens” because, honestly, I didn’t think that I could do worse as the council person. Running for office was one of the hardest things that I have ever done. Having been in office for exactly 29 days (but who is counting), I can tell you that governance right now is really hard.  But I am excited to tackle these challenges and to learn and to grow from this experience.  I am excited to try to help this City in any way that I can. 

LL:   What advice would you give women reading this? 

There is a saying: “If not me, then who?  If not now, then when?” I think we, as women, naturally live by those words. We all volunteer too much of our time, take over assignments when someone else drops the ball, and even lead organizations when past leadership has failed.   

But I also encourage the women reading this to ask: “Why not?  Let’s see what happens.” Sometimes you should explore things that may veer you off the path you thought you were on or should be on. Those unexpected paths, however, can lead greater opportunities. Sometimes you just have to take that leap.