Student Brandy Johnson
Brandy Johnson has wanted to be an attorney since she was seven. But with a family to raise, she instead started her career elsewhere in the legal profession. Her first legal assistant job came after advocating for her spouse when he suffered a workplace injury. The attorney representing them offered Johnson a job.
That was in her hometown of New Orleans, and Johnson started work just after Hurricane Katrina. She stayed in the city for nearly two years but eventually relocated to Houston, where she moved to paralegal work and earned her bachelor’s degree.
For Johnson, Houston was “a space where we could continue to grow and put me in a better position to take care of my responsibilities.”
For over 15 years, Johnson’s paralegal work spanned from assisting with project management and drafting documents, to litigation preparation, interviewing clients, and actively participating in mediation at five different law firms.
But once her children graduated from high school, Johnson was ready to fulfill that lifelong dream of becoming an attorney. She applied to several law schools but says Mitchell Hamline stood out because she felt a sense of “home and family.”
“The administration went above and beyond to ensure I wasn’t just a number,” she said. “They actively wanted me at Mitchell Hamline.” Unable to visit the school during COVID, Johnson says the admissions director used a cell phone to give her a campus tour after she expressed concerns about moving her family across the country.
Now in St. Paul, Johnson is a full-time student and treasurer of Mitchell Hamline’s Black Law Students Association. She’s also an admissions ambassador, where she can encourage other paralegals and people of color to attend law school. “I believe the legal profession isn’t very representative of the face of America,” she said. “It’s my goal to get more students of color to consider Mitchell Hamline and that’s why I wanted to be an ambassador. It shows other students of color that there’s an environment where they can feel comfortable.”
In addition to attending Mitchell Hamline, Johnson is also an energy fellow at Winthrop & Weinstine in Minneapolis. She says her real-world experience as a paralegal helped prepare her for law school.
With plans to graduate in spring 2024 as the first attorney ever in her family, Johnson hopes to focus on advocating for underrepresented and marginalized communities. Her own journey comes knowing her own mother “couldn’t sit in the seats that I sit in now” because of who law school was accessible to in the past.
“It’s a big deal to me to honor those ancestors who have come before me and very important for me to speak in rooms and areas where we’ve been silenced.”
This article was written by Marla Khan-Schwartz, a freelance writer in the Twin Cities, and first appeared in Citations, a publication of the Minnesota Paralegal Association.
We love helping paralegals who want to take that next step in the legal profession. Learn more at mitchellhamline.edu/admission.