{"id":143,"date":"2016-11-10T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T17:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/?p=143"},"modified":"2016-12-07T13:20:42","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T18:20:42","slug":"ven-johnson-82-fighting-for-diversity-in-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/2016\/11\/10\/ven-johnson-82-fighting-for-diversity-in-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Ven Johnson ’82: Fighting for diversity in law"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ven
Ven Johnson ’82 (Photo by Marek Dziekonski, Dziekonski Photography.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The logo for Ven Johnson\u2019s law firm is a pair of red boxing gloves. The message? He\u2019ll fight for you.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also battling in a major way for the institution of the law and his recent gift of $100,000 to Detroit Mercy Law shows his commitment to that fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to have the law reflect our society,\u201d he said. \u201cThe only way, to me, that the law will ever change for the better is if it represents as many views as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

His donation to the School of Law will create an expendable scholarship to be used to attract underrepresented minorities to the University and the field of law.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want our school to be more racially diverse,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need more people of color and people from diverse backgrounds and people who have alternative lifestyles. The law is for everybody and the people who make up the field must represent the population as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like Johnson to fight for what he believes in: When asked why he chose the field of law, he said: \u201cThe short answer is, I like to argue.\u201d So after earning his undergraduate degree from Kalamazoo College, he applied to Detroit Mercy Law.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one in my family worked in law\u2014my father was a principal and my mother was a teacher,\u201d he said. And I really didn\u2019t know anything about Detroit,\u201d he said, aside from a couple trips to see the Tigers play. He knew even less about the University of Detroit.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents took me to school and I moved into housing and on the Sunday before classes were to start I found out the law school was downtown, and I was living at the McNichols campus,\u201d he said. \u201cI had to take the bus to classes.\u201d<\/p>\n

All that was to change, Johnson said. \u201cI fell in love with the city,\u201d he said. He eventually moved to an apartment just blocks from the School of Law and was invigorated by the energy of the city. \u201cI didn\u2019t know it at the time, but I wanted to be downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move also had the advantage of putting Johnson right in the middle of the legal world in Detroit. While still a student he clerked for an attorney whose office was in the Buhl Building and he said that job was the only reason he made it to the second year of school.<\/p>\n

\u201cBooks are not my passion,\u201d he said. \u201cBut with clerking, I got to see the fruits of my labor and I realized that law was the right thing for me.\u201d He also found great value in the mock trial program at Detroit Mercy Law and found professor Pat Keenan an inspiration in the way he made the law come alive. \u201cHe made me love the law.\u201d Later, an internship with Michigan Court of Appeals Judge John H. Shepherd cemented that feeling.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a huge deal,\u201d he said, \u201cespecially for someone who was in the bottom third of his law class to work for someone thought to be one of the brightest legal minds in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upon graduation, Johnson thought he\u2019d pursue a career as a prosecutor, but no one was interested in him. He began at a small Detroit firm, practicing in all areas of personal injury before moving to Kohl, Secrest where he was mentored by John Secrest, who Johnson calls \u201cone of the best legal minds I\u2019ve ever seen. I was blessed to have him as a mentor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson said Secrest showed him how to be himself and to separate the lawyer from the person. Eventually he joined the firm of Fieger, Fieger and Schwartz, where he worked with noted attorney Geoffrey Fieger as a plaintiff\u2019s attorney: \u201cYou can say what you want about him, but he\u2019s good and if you want to learn, you should learn from somebody like him.\u201d He won multi-million-dollar jury verdicts and case settlements before leaving the firm in May 2011 to start Johnson Law.<\/p>\n

Today the firm has nearly 40 employees in offices in Grand Rapids and downtown Detroit, in the Buhl Building where he had his first position as a law clerk. Still a fan of the city, despite its hard times and the bankruptcy, Johnson knew that was the only place to run his firm. He doesn\u2019t regret it one bit.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone asked me \u2018why go downtown, there\u2019s nothing there?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cBut I followed my gut and decided to start reattaching myself to all the good that\u2019s available down here. And today, look at all the construction down here. It\u2019s alive again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The logo for Ven Johnson\u2019s law firm is a pair of red boxing gloves. The message? He\u2019ll fight for you. He\u2019s also battling in a major way for the institution of the law and his recent gift of $100,000 to Detroit Mercy Law shows his commitment to that fight. \u201cWe …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2,10,8],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/88\/2016\/11\/VJL_Vertical.jpg?fit=2472%2C2843&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8Kcng-2j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}