From the moment Leslie Foster decided to become an attorney, through law school, and even after she started working, she didn’t know what kind of law she wanted practice; she only knew she wanted to be a lawyer.
Famous civil rights lawyer Fred Gray unknowingly planted the seeds of Foster’s interest in the law. She heard Gray speak during her sophomore year at David Lipscomb University in Nashville, where she was majoring in American studies with no specific career goal in mind. The passion with which he spoke about the law gave her the direction she lacked.
“I had never thought about law school, but after hearing him speak, I started to think about it. The next semester, I took a constitutional law class, and I loved it. That sealed the deal for me,” she says.
Foster studied law at Mississippi College, a small Baptist school. Instead of trying to figure out the kind of law she would be practicing, she concentrated on her studies, confident the rest would work itself out.
“There are no lawyers in my family, so I didn’t know what to expect. Some students know they want to do labor and employment or be a litigator; that wasn’t me. I knew I would have to get out of law school to see what worked for me,” she says.
Foster met her husband, Nick, while they were students at Mississippi College. They married while in school, and upon graduation, he took a job with the Department of Justice. His employer gave him a choice of several cities, and he and Foster selected Chattanooga sight unseen instead of her home town of Nashville or his home town of Memphis.
“Chattanooga was good middle ground between our family and friends, and a good place for us to start our own life together without one of us falling back in with other people,” Foster says.
As Nick settled in at the U.S. Trustee Office, Foster began looking for work. During her interview with Spears, Moore, Rebman & Williams, she knew she’d found her home in the legal profession.
“I was comfortable during the interview. The people here seemed to be friends and appeared to enjoy spending time together. Not only does this firm place an emphasis on family, it feels like you’re with family when you’re here,” Foster says.
Spears Moore hired Foster just before the recession hit in 2008. She says she has felt blessed ever since. “I was at the right place at the right time. After the economy tanked, legal jobs were hard to come by,” she says.
Foster had been a student for as long as she could remember. Through elementary, middle and high school, and through college and law school, she has been a sponge, absorbing as much knowledge as she could. But when she entered the work force, ready to squeeze out everything she’d soaked up, she discovered her learning was only beginning.
“Associates here are given the opportunity to work under various shareholders, which has allowed me to work in different areas of the law. As a result, I’ve learned more in nearly four years of practicing law than I did as a student in law school,” Foster says.
Since Foster loves to learn, working at Spears Moore has suited her well.
“I’ve always loved being a student, and I never go home not knowing something I didn’t know when I came to work,” she says.
In time, Foster gravitated toward three areas of the law – medical malpractice defense, general insurance defense and professional liability defense.
“Medical malpractice is a good fit for me because I not only get to learn about the law, I also get to learn about medicine,” she says.
Foster radiates a captivating blend of confidence and humility. Her voice is self-assured as she talks about her work, and then becomes more unassuming as she talks about the challenges she’s faced as an attorney.
“I prefer to be kind and sweet, but this is an adversarial system, and me being kind and sweet doesn’t always benefit my client, so I can’t always be what I would prefer. Figuring out when to be tough and when to be kind and sweet has not been easy,” she says.
Foster will continue to stretch the boundaries of her comfort zone in the interest of her clients, although she will not allow herself to lose the innate qualities of her personality that make her who she is.
“I want to be an attorney people can trust, so I need to learn to strike a balance between being who I am and zealously advocating for my client. I have failed to do that at times, and I have succeeded at doing that at times,” she says.
Challenges and all, Foster likes practicing law. She still feels the excitement Gray sparked in her, and she is grateful for the opportunity to help others through what is for most clients a taxing situation. “Litigation is hard on everyone, and I hope I take some of the stress off my clients. If they won’t let me bear all of their stress, I want to at least bear some of it,” she says.
The law is not Foster’s only passion; she’s also committed to making a difference in her community. For example, she and her husband are part of an outreach effort through Clear Creek Church of Christ in which they become involved in the lives of inner-city kids. Each Thursday night during the school year, they feed dinner to the kids, teach them a Bible lesson and “hang out with them.”
“The first six months we did this, the kids didn’t open up. They needed to know we would be back if they shared the problems they were having at home or school. They didn’t talk with us right away because they didn’t trust us, but lately, they’ve been opening up. After some of our conversations, I’ve gotten in my car to leave and just sobbed,” Foster says.
Ever the student, Foster says the kids are teaching her things. “They’ve made me realize how blessed I am,” she says.
Foster and her husband are also leaders of a small group of certified hospice volunteers at their church. While its members have one particular patient to whom they take food each week, they also fulfill wishes for hospice patients, whether someone needs yard work done, a room painted, or a ramp built. Hospice of Chattanooga calls them the Clear Creek Dream Team.
Both volunteer efforts, and the person Foster strives to be, are a product of her faith in God, which she places above all else. “My work important to me,” she says, “but my faith is very important to me.”
Foster also loves working out with her husband at the YMCA during their lunch breaks, walking their dog in their Mountain Creek neighborhood, located at the foot of Signal Mountain, and reading.
Once, Foster didn’t know what she wanted to be. And then she didn’t know what kind of lawyer she wanted to be. But she believed those things would resolve themselves in due course, and they did. She also hadn’t planned on moving to Chattanooga, or marrying Nick, or making the lives of inner-city kids better for a few hours a week, but those things worked themselves out, too.
And now, it’s unlikely even the best trial lawyer could produce a jury that would say none of this was by design. “I believe I’m where I’m supposed to be,” she says, her voice both self-assured and unassuming.