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Jarrett Johnson

Attorney at Law
Admitted to The Missouri Bar, 1994
Juris Doctor, 1993
(University of Missouri-Kansas City) B.A. – Psychology, 1990 (Texas A&M University)

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From Jarrett’s interview on ReelLawyers.com

Video Transcript
My early life was a little atypical um
my birth mother um battled and later
conquered a drug problem but put me up
for adoption I spent three months in a
Houston Texas orphanage before being
adopted into a pretty tumultuous
household with a lot of abuse a lot of
poverty a lot of divorce and remarriage
and divorce and remarriage and I left
home right before I turned 17 I started
working jobs when I was 14 but left home
before I was 17 put myself through
college and law school and moved up from
Texas to Missouri sight unseen to begin
my legal career in 1990 I began my
career um first doing appeals for
Indigent people who had been convicted
of serious crimes and that allowed me to
look at hundreds of trial transcripts
and see uh the the demeanor of the
judges what kind of arguments the
lawyers utilized what arguments were
successful and unsuccessful and it gave
me the opportunity to sort of be a fly
on the wall in countless trials before I
ever stepped into a courtroom myself and
during my job handling appeals I won a
reversal of a conviction for a man who
was uh wrongfully convicted of an
assault inside of a bar and that
prompted me to want to transfer to the
trial division for the public defender
and I did that and I won my first
several jury trials and before I knew it
I was trying a murder case a month on
average um in my late 20s and I was
successful at that you know I was sort
of thrown into the ocean on my own and
um learn to navigate my way through very
difficult cases all of the twists and
turns of a jury trial the
unpredictability of each each judge um
certainly the unpredictability of
witnesses and juries along the way but
during that phase of my life I probably
first chaired three dozen jury trials
including a lot of murder cases where I
won
acquittals when my youngest son was born
I was forced to leave the public
defender office and find a higher paying
job and so I went to a big fancy law
firm and I just found that that
environment held me back and clipped my
wings and I never really enjoyed being
under the thumb of another lawyer some
of it was ego but some of it was just um
about my actual ability I mean the fact
of the matter is I often times tried
more cases than the people who I worked
for and so in 2010 I with um some help
from my ex-in-laws who are like the
parents I never had I ventured out onto
my own and I took anything that would
come in the door for a while that’s how
I started handling personal injury cases
um but also still handling criminal
cases and balancing those two things on
my own for a dozen years before uh Jordy
and I came
together after many successes as a
public defender winning murder cases I
was anonymously nominated for an award
here in Missouri that’s the highest
recognition that a trial lawyer can
receive one lawyer in Kansas City
receives this award annually dating back
to the 1950s it’s called the law Hawker
Memorial trial lawyer award and I
received that um when I was in my late
20s for recognition of my outstanding
trial work and my my work in the
courtroom in general so to me those
judges that I looked up to for them to
bestow that recognition upon me and um
the fellow lawyers who have received
that award before and after me puts me
in some pretty good company that that
humbles
me so I’ve had the privilege to teach in
in two venues um I’m a volunteer trial
advocacy professor at the University of
Missouri Kansas City law school right
down the street where I went to law
school and I helped teach law students
the nuts and bolts of being a trial
lawyer because that’s something you
don’t get enough of in a school setting
but I’m especially proud of my role as a
mentor in What’s called the trial
Academy put on by our Kansas City
metropolitan Bar Association and there I
have the privilege of teaching
relatively young lawyers people who’ve
been in practice for five years or less
often times a big fancy law firms gifted
people who’ve never seen the inside of a
courtroom and don’t know thing one about
trying a case and I get to um bring this
group of young lawyers into a real
courtroom with a real case problem and
help them dissect and organize that
problem and then get on their feet and
do all of the things that lawyers have
nightmares about doing sometimes because
they just haven’t had the chance to do
it picking a jury making an opening
statement cross-examining a difficult
witness uh doing all of the things that
you go to law school to do or at least
you think you’re going to do and then um
sometimes it takes a while before you
get that chance and I feel very lucky
that I early in my career um got to try
jury trial after jury trial sometimes
under very daunting
circumstances and um I’m just forever
grateful for that experience

My name is Jarrett Johnson. I have spent my entire career as a trial attorney here in Kansas City, Missouri. For three decades, I have had the privilege of representing everyday people when their lives have been upended by catastrophic injury, death, and psychological trauma — caused by the negligence and carelessness of individuals and corporations. These cases involve serious personal injuries and wrongful death, sex abuse at religious schools, injuries to children in foster care, automobile accidents, railroad crossing injuries and other injuries to railroad workers, injuries on private and public premises, and injuries/deaths caused by dangerously defective products.

I have first-chaired more than three dozen jury trials in my career.  In 2000, when I was just 30 years old, the Missouri Bar Foundation presented me with the Lon O. Hocker Memorial Trial Lawyer Award in recognition of my outstanding trial skills. Since the award was created in the 1950s, less than 200 lawyers in the history of the State of Missouri have received this honor. Federal and state judges in Missouri have regularly asked me to volunteer my time to teach young lawyers how to prepare and present their cases to a jury.  I also spent many years as a volunteer professor of trial advocacy at UMKC Law School — where I earned my Juris Doctor in 1993.

I share this information about myself so that you may get a sense of who I am, both the lawyer and the person.  I detail some of my past achievements and recognition to let you know more about me, who I have represented, and what you can expect if you entrust me to bring you justice and closure—not to bolster my ego.  A lawyer cannot be so consumed with his own ego and perceived greatness that he misses something important in your case. Every case must be approached with a fresh awareness and desire to learn the truth.  While past success is one factor to consider, the past means nothing when it comes to your case.

Our legal system can work to help people who have suffered injury and loss. The system is not perfect, but time and again—when a client’s story is properly and completely told by an effective voice of a caring and hard-working lawyer—justice may be done.

People seek out a lawyer when life is at its worst.  I always get to know my clients, and see them as people — not files or fees.  I welcome the opportunity to listen to you, and use my abilities as a lawyer to help you through whatever you are facing.