Kevyn Orr: Leadership
Washington Office Partner-in-Charge Kevyn Orr talks about the responsibilities that come with leadership, promoting the rule of law, and the importance of committing to something bigger than oneself.
Read the full transcript below:
Kevyn Orr:
Frankly, I'm honored to be in the position. And I mean that both personally, I live a life that was illegal for my father who grew up in Jim Crow and would've gotten my grandfather killed, who was born in 1898, but a life that 80% of the African-Americans who were eligible, who volunteered for the Revolutionary War Thought that I would eventually have.
Kevyn Orr:
And whether you go through the Kansas Nebraska Act, the Missouri Compromise, the Clay Compromise, Dred Scott, Plessy versus Ferguson. If you look throughout the arc of history for this country, it's been the law. And so to be a lawyer at a premiere, unique worldwide elite general partnership, and have the opportunity of leadership, I really see that as a privilege because this is an opportunity that for 350 years, people who came from me fought for me to have. So I have a sense of obligation to discharge that in an honorable and responsible manner, because I carry their sort of hopes and dreams on my shoulder every day.
Kevyn Orr:
What I'm really thinking about in terms of leadership also is the future. We're not building this institution for me. We're building it for you, for Deborah, okay, for Tiffany, for others that are in the audience for the next generation. And we're building that because the single greatest export we sincerely believe exists for Northern hemisphere western democracies is the rule of law.
Kevyn Orr:
And even though it may be stressed in an organization like ours, it's not just leadership from what we're doing here, but it's taking a leadership role in that process. And thus, we are involved in Laredo. We're involved in VetLex. We make a commitment to our partners worldwide to be fair. We try to represent our clients in a way that we will take on the federal government because we have to test and make sure that that rule of law exists, because if we don't, you can spiral down into tyranny. Some of that's being tested now.
Kevyn Orr:
So I think those components of leadership of looking at examples, thinking you have an obligation beyond just yourself, it's who's here because of you and who advances because of you and if I can do that in a way that inspires the other generation to come back and look back on my life and said, "You can do well by doing good." And I've done something more than just be another corporate attorney that has lined his pocket, but I've left a legacy for the next generation and I've advanced in some sense, the rule of law, which protects us from the jungle in ways that other parts of the world don't have, then maybe I've done a good thing while at the same time practicing law.
Kevyn Orr:
So it's those components having a sense of something bigger than yourself and being committed to it in a very sincere way.
