Professional Experience
After a successful career as a partner in two prominent law firms and adjunct law school professor at University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, Ms. Ries opened her own law firm in 2006. She serves as a legal advisor and counselor to her individual clients and small to medium-sized businesses on transactional matters, without the administrative distractions and client conflicts of being a partner in a larger law firm.
In addition to her legal practice, Ms. Ries has owned, managed, and renovated several commercial real estate projects in Maryland, including, most recently, mixed-use office and warehouse projects located in the Woodberry section of Baltimore. These experiences have strengthened her understanding of the complex issues involved in the purchase, management, leasing, and sale of property with the firsthand knowledge that allows her to serve her own clients with legal and practical advice.
Breast Cancer Prevention Research
A fifteen-year survivor of breast cancer, Ms. Ries (with her husband, attorney Thomas Ries) established the John Fetting Fund for Breast Cancer Prevention at Johns Hopkins, named in honor of Ms. Ries’s oncologist, John Fetting, M.D. Ms. Ries serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the Fetting Fund, together with Dr. Fetting and Vered Stearns, M.D., Director of the Breast Center at Johns Hopkins, and other members of the Johns Hopkins medical faculty. Using cutting edge medical science and technological advances available at Johns Hopkins, this research program focuses on the science of cancer prevention (as opposed to more traditional research on treatment options and quest for the cure), representing a groundbreaking change from the traditional paradigm of a person waiting to be diagnosed with cancer (when the risk of cancer spreading is much higher) before seeking or receiving medical intervention. The Fetting Fund seeks to identify the 1 in 8 women at high lifetime risk for developing breast cancer (something that has not been done heretofore) and to develop safe, effective, natural products, and drugs, as well as advances in medical science, to prevent breast cancer. Of equal importance, the research supported by the Fetting Fund seeks to identify the 7 in 8 women who will not develop breast cancer. As a result of this research, medical caregivers will be able to provide more prevention efforts to those at high risk and reassure those who are not.
To date, the Fetting Fund has raised over $4,500,000 for research that is underway at Johns Hopkins, with promising results beginning to come to fruition. Ms. Ries is a continuing, dynamic advocate for the research goals and philanthropic support of the Fetting Fund, reflecting an integration of her life’s work and her life’s passion for contributing in a hopeful and meaningful manner to a better future for others.
An article about the Fetting Fund featuring Ms. Ries and her family can be found here (PDF).
Additional Background
Ms. Ries was a partner at Rosenberg Martin Greenberg, LLP for fifteen years. While there, she formed Leslie S. Ries, P.C. in 1991, which was certified as a women-owned enterprise by the City of Baltimore. She began her career as an associate and then a partner in the Real Estate Department of Frank, Bernstein, Conaway & Goldman.
A graduate of The Park School of Baltimore, Hampshire College, and the University of Maryland School of Law, Ms. Ries has a Preeminent AV rating by Martindale-Hubble and has been selected by her peers for inclusion in Best Lawyers® and Super Lawyers® every year since 2009. She was honored with the first annual Mary Pickersgill Award for Women’s Leadership in Business by the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House and Museum in 2013.
A frequent teacher and lecturer on issues related to real estate transactions, Ms. Ries was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law for 13 years where she co-taught a course on real estate transactions. She also served on the Real Property, Planning and Zoning Section Council of the Maryland State Bar Association for many years.
Ms. Ries has been active with some of the area’s leading non-profit organizations. She co-founded the annual Lawyer’s Campaign Against Hunger that has raised over $5,700,000 for the Maryland Food Bank and other poverty organizations, and Second Helping, an innovative program that redistributed surplus food from restaurants and hotels to area emergency shelters. She also served on the National Advisory Board of the Shriver Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.