Professor Lewis graduated number one in her class with a degree in Political Science from Grambling State University. Prior to attending law school, she received summer fellowships to study at Carnegie-Mellon University, the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Professor Lewis started her professional career as a statistician and ADR trainer at the Conflict and Change Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She then clerked for the Honorable Daniel Wozniak, Chief Judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals. She practiced in the areas of environmental, elder, family, housing, and probate law.

Prior to joining the faculty at Cleveland-Marshall, Professor Lewis was an associate professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, a summer visiting professor at Seattle University School of Law, and a legal writing instructor at Hamline University School of Law. She has also taught in the American Bar Association CLEO Summer Institute.

In the summer of 2012, Professor Lewis was a visiting researcher at the foundation Brocher in Geneva, Switzerland. In the summer of 2013, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Medical Humanities (University of Texas Medical Branch), The Hasting Center, and Yale University's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.

Professor Lewis writes in the areas of bioethics, environmental, family, and inheritance law. She has published in the George Mason Law Review, the Cardozo Law Review, and the Lewis & Clark Law Review. Her most recent article on surrogacy and contract remedies is forthcoming in the St. John's Law Review. In July 2012, New York University Press published her book titled Papa's Baby: Paternity and Artificial Insemination. Her next book, titled Arrogance, Avarice and Anguish: Addressing the Ethical and Legal Consequences of Posthumous Reproduction, will be published by Routledge Press.