Diana Lewis

Professor Hannah Scott

LEAD 444

February 4, 2020

After I graduate from Western Carolina with a degree in Political Science, it is my dream

to pursue a career in law, specifically criminal law. I am still figuring out if I want to do defense

or prosecution my first few years as a lawyer, as I pay back all my debt, but also still have a

relatively open mind to whatever I think is better for me to pursue and where I can make the

most difference in society and our justice system. In this career field, it is my wish to open my

own practice, after working somewhere else for a while and saving up, to defend victims of

sexual assault, misconduct, and violence because those types of cases are usually not taken by

lawyers due to the extreme toughness of trying such a case. I hope to attend Elon law school to

pursue this degree and my future as they seem to be the best fit to me right now and what I want

from a university.

For this career field, I think Servant Leadership, also the leadership theory I already best

identify with, will help me the most as I serve my clients. Servant leadership is all about helping

those in need over myself, something that if I were able to represent these types of men and

women later on in life, I would be doing. Servant leadership includes, listening, empathy,

healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the

growth of people, and building a community. I believe that each of these qualities will apply to

my future career daily.

In my career, I will need to be able to listen to the facts of the situation in order to build

my case, especially since these types of cases need evidence and multiple indisputable facts to be
taken seriously in a court of law. Next, empathy, dealing with these cases will be emotional and I

can empathize with them. Healing would more than likely have to be more on the person who I

am representing and seeking the help they need, which I could be able to provide resources to

those people. Awareness is huge due to the fact that when people hear the statistic 1 in 5 women

are sexually assaulted in college, it doesn’t mean as much until they know that 1 in 5, it becomes

more real. Persuasion is a must in these types of situations because as the lawyer, I need to

persuade the jury to believe my client, not the defendant. I will have to be able to tell the events

of the assault so that the jury can conceptualize what happened and how it would make them feel

if it was them, their son, their daughter. I will have to be able to prepare my client for the worst

and be able to give them foresight into the case and the likely outcome based on evidence

presented. I know that the “win” or “loss” of the case I will most definitely taking ownership and

responsibility of as well. Hopefully through the awareness and the fight for justice, this will grow

the community as a whole to recognize and stop sexual assault. Lastly, I would hope to build a

community to support one another through such things.

Some leaders in this field directly would be Tina Tchen, Fatima Goss Graves, Hillary

Rosen, and Roberta A. Kaplan. All these women are founders of the Time’s Up Organization in

2018, an organization that provides legal defense to sexual violence victims as well as victims of

sexual misconduct in the workplace. All of these women, I believe to be, are prime examples of

Servant Leaders. They have given their time, money, and dedication towards an organization that

serves others who are one, not able to afford legal assistance, and two, a competent defense

lawyer for the victim to handle their situation. Roberta Kaplan also teaches at Columbia

University Law School, which is also admirable and shows hard work as she teaches future

lawyers how to be compassionate and give their clients due justice through their practice of law.
Tina Tchen has spent her career focusing on the lack of diversity in the workplace, sexual

violence, and gender inequity, which shows her servitude to the general public as she works to

fix these social issues. Hillary Rosen uses her social media savvy to serve the Time’s Up

organization in getting their message across to the general public. Fatima Graves not only works

and helped find Time’s Up, but also works at the National Women’s Law Center, further

showcasing her leadership capabilities and services to her community and gender identity. Due

to all of these accolades and hard work not only with Time’s Up, but also with their own

individual fields, I think that all four of these women best fit the leadership theory/model of

Servant Leadership.

I believe that my understanding of leadership will make me a better candidate than most

because it will give my employer an idea of how I understand the inner workings of

organizations and structure and how my boss may lead me as well as my coworkers when other

don’t. My understanding will also serve as a knowledge basin for my coworkers as we work to

relieve a tense situation or reach a goal of some kind.

I also believe that my understanding of leadership can help me gain more leadership roles

in whatever organization I choose to work for or wherever I attend school. I believe that a

foundation of knowledge helps with actual action of that knowledge without being detrimental to

anyone else. If someone were not able to exercise what Servant Leadership because they don’t

have a full knowledge of what it actually is, someone who does, will have very different results

from someone who does not. That’s where my knowledge from this minor comes in!