Jennifer R. Johnson is Chair of the Dean’s Advisory Council at the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing. A former ICU nurse, Johnson is an attorney specializing in catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death and medical malpractice. She worked for 17 years at two different law firms, first representing medical practitioners and then advocating for patients, before founding her own legal practice, Jennifer Johnson Law, in 2012.
The reason I get out of bed is to have coffee — of course. But the first thing I do, as I swing my legs over the side of the bed, is to say, “God, if I do nothing else today, help me to know and love you better.
The work I do is heavy, and I need to get my head right and my heart right to do it. I have a morning routine to ground me. I am of the Christian faith, I study the Bible. Each morning I spend time in meditation, prayer or journaling, sometimes combined with a walk. That’s me. It’s not negotiable. If I feel like I’m too busy or I’m overwhelmed, I need to do it more, not less.
Work is literally a two-minute drive. I should walk, but I often need to go on somewhere.
The first thing I do at work is connect with my team. My paralegals will already be at it. I make sure that we’re all good, that everybody’s on the same page and we know what we need to accomplish that day. From there, it’s just a matter of, what are the priorities for the day? Do I have a court appearance? Do I have a deposition for that day? Do I have a discovery?
Selecting the right people to repre- sent is so key. I probably take on one in every 150 cases I look at. I try to keep a steady pace. We’re driven by deadlines, by statutes of limitations, but people also need to be heard. I feel the weight of working with people who’ve lost loved ones or who are injured.
I love to meet people in their own home, especially if they’re elderly or immobile. I could insist they come into my very sterile, beautiful conference room, and sit them down and talk to them about their case. But imagine, if I get into my car and drive to their home, see the pictures on their walls… I’m happy to be there, and I’m welcomed. I haven’t elevated myself, I’ve come to them, and we have a very different conversation.
I’ll eat at my desk unless I have a lunch meeting or I’m taking the interns out or something. What’s super fun for me as well as meeting clients is meeting the experts—whether it’s placental pathologists or cardiothoracic surgeons. It’s fascinating that I get to interface with these people. I deal with a lot of elderly people in my work with ophthalmology cases: cataracts, retinal surgeons.
As an ICU nurse, I would work with people as they were straddling life and death. What a privilege it is to walk with people during that important piece of life, oftentimes ending in death. It’s not unlike what I get to do as a lawyer. I’m with people who are going through the absolute worst thing they have ever been through. If I can do something good and bring some purpose to their pain…. People can endure a lot if there is a purpose.
Both of my parents invested their lives to serve other people. My father was a minister, very much a
country preacher. My mother is a nurse. Together they raised six kids and my father served in two wars. When I got the idea to become an attorney, I really thought: I wonder what skills I learned as a minister’s kid that I can transfer to the practice of law.
I’ve bottled the compassion that I learned as a nurse and brought it into the practice of law, where it’s a little bit of a novel concept. Compassion is a core value, the driving force of my personal and professional life. And it sells. I have to make money so that I can keep my doors open.
The very first case I took, when I started my firm with zero cases, was for a woman in her late seventies. I felt that somebody should do something” “about what happened to her so it didn’t happen to someone else. In straight medical malpractice, often people aren’t that interested in representing the elderly because their age means they’re considered of limited economic value. If there’s a case that cries out for justice for an elderly person, I really say to myself, somebody needs to do something about what happened here.
I used to work to exhaustion and that’s how I knew my day was done. That’s not sustainable — I learned. Now my day ends at 6:30 or 7:00p.m. It’s a head and heart thing. I think I’ve managed to create a practice where I’m following my heart and my passion.
If I have had any inherent talent, it’s in music. Piano is my instrument. I always have a piano and I recently started play- ing the keyboards at my church a couple of times a month, which is completely fun and good for my soul.
I am often in tears over what a client has gone through. The first time I cried at a deposition was because I felt so deeply about my client, a young woman who has passed as a result of cancer. I was so embarrassed. But I have become very comfortable with tears. The day I cannot shed a tear with the people I represent is the day I need to go and work creating widgets or tilling soil.”
