Nov. 3, 2025 — Lawyers play pivotal roles across the wide spectrum of American centers of power – from the White House to local governments, from corporate boardrooms to nonprofit organizations.
A recent online webinar hosted by the University of Houston Law Center, “Lawyers Who Lead: Ethics, Influence, and Impact,” examined the significant influence lawyers can hold and how to exercise it responsibly.
The two-hour continuing legal education presentation featured Andrew C. Gratz (J.D. ’02), founder of the Initiative on Lawyers as Leaders and creator and professor of the “Lawyers as Leaders” course at UHLC; Renee Knake Jefferson, Joanne and Larry Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics and Professor of Law at UHLC, and founder of the Legal Ethics Roundup on Substack; and H. Stephen Grace Jr., president and founder of H.S. Grace and Co. Inc. along with UHLC Dean and Professor of Law Leonard M. Baynes.
“Lawyers comprise less than one half of 1% of the population but influence every-day decisions,” Dean Baynes told the audience in his opening remarks. “No other profession accounts for more leaders in every aspect of our society.”
He noted that 26 U.S. presidents along with the current Texas governor and two U.S. senators had a legal background not to mention countless CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Lawyers are leaders in the boardroom, courtroom, or public opinion.”
But if lawyers are natural leaders, why do so many fall short? This question drives Gratz’s scholarship and his desire to improve leadership skills within the legal profession. “It troubles me that while I’ve had lots of managers who were great legal leaders, I’ve had far more who were not,” he said. “Lawyers typically do not make good leaders. I think …it’s because we are not encouraged to become one.”
Gratz identified two primary paths lawyers can follow to become effective leaders:
· Leading Oneself: leading from where you are, developing influence skills, embracing responsibility, and cultivating humility.
· Leading Others: focusing on developing influence rather than control, earning trust, navigating organizational politics, being a team player and leading with purpose.
Jefferson added that leadership is connected to professional ethics.
“Being a leader as a lawyer is not just focused on our work for our clients, but it is really grounded and rooted in our role as a public citizen,” she said. “We see this as foundational in the professional conduct rules that guide us.”
She encouraged attendees to think of leadership as “ethical stewardship,” focusing on three key areas: democratizing access to justice, increasing transparency and accountability for the public, and choosing stewardship over ownership of the legal profession.
“We are a self-regulating profession,” she said. “We are sometimes critiqued as being guardians of our profession in a way [and] really we should focus on being stewards.”
The discussion also covered leadership governance in corporate settings. Grace, who serves as a business consultant and testimony expert on organization governance and business conduct, said lawyers need to help organizations ask the right questions and ensure due diligence is being done.
“A central role for the lawyer is not to feel compelled to make governance decisions, but to ensure that governance issues are being addressed,” he said. “That’s a big, big point that the business lawyers can play, and we think it’s going to expand and reach into other areas. Not that they're there to tell the finance department that they need to do cash flows in addition to income statements but to inquire as to whether these various issues are being done.” The recording will be available On Demand soon at www.law.uh.edu/cle.
