Attorney Anthony O. Van Johnson may be running his own personal injury law firm now. However, this certainly was no overnight success story. Attorney Anthony O. Van Johnson was in the military.
He toured Europe as a professional musician and even taught music for a while. Only then did he realize that becoming a lawyer was his true passion, and he wasn’t going to let anybody stand in his way. Luckily, he is more than happy to share his law journey with everybody.
You Can Start Later in Life
Some people claim that you have to start law school as soon as you can. Attorney Anthony O. Van Johnson disagrees. In fact, he tells us that going away and traveling the world was one of the best things that he possibly could have done in his journey to becoming an attorney.
Becoming an attorney isn’t all about attending law school and completing law exam after law exam. It is about becoming experienced in the world. It allows you to start seeing things from the perspective of others. It teaches you how to interact with one another. All vital skills to becoming an attorney.
Attorney Anthony O. Van Johnson tells us that he was one of the oldest students in law school and certainly one that had the most jobs. However, he insists that it is this experience that helped him to succeed. By this point in his life, he already knew what he wanted to do.
Life at Law School
Law school certainly isn’t going to be easy. Those studying at law school are going to be getting complex legislation and case law thrown at them on an almost daily basis.
Not only do students have to memorize this law, but you have to learn how to analyze these laws.
Attorney Anthony O. Van Johnson claims that this is one of the hardest parts of becoming a lawyer. While he knew that he wanted to be a lawyer by this point, he hadn’t attended school for a good number of years. However, he doubts that would have helped things. There is a lot of information to pick up when you are looking to become an attorney via law school, and you need to be able to retain that information.
When he sat down for his first law exam, he told us that he was terrified. It was the first real ‘test’ that he had in the world of law. He felt that it was a make or break for his law career.
He aced the law exam. However, he insists that even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t have impacted his career in any way. There were others on his law school course that didn’t pass that exam.
However, they didn’t give up, and many of them have gone on to running successful law firms. In fact, Attorney Anthony O. Van Johnson claims that failing that first law exam was really what they needed to encourage them. Lawyers will fail sometimes. However, it is what you do to pick yourself back up again that counts.
For Attorney Anthony O. Van Johnson, life at law school was a blur. It was spent interacting with his fellow students, learning law facts, learning about advocacy, and taking a load of exams. All vital for his current success as a lawyer, but certainly no easy ride.
Joining His First Law Firm
Attorney Anthony O. Van Johnson tells us that his journey to becoming a lawyer wasn’t over when he finished law school. There is only so much that law school can do to prepare you for a life in the law. You have to go out there and get real-world experience. This is exactly what he did, and it is exactly what he encourages other people to do.
His journey took him into the world of criminal law in downtown Atlanta. He was certainly thrown in at the deep-end too. He was given a full caseload of criminal cases to work.
He worked extensively on these cases for almost 2-years. It was here that he really learned what it meant to be a lawyer. The differences that you would be making to the average person’s life.
Attorney Anthony O. Van Johnson feels that working in a small law firm and getting experience where you can interact with people on a day-to-day basis and see how your representation can have a positive impact on a person’s life are one of the best things you can do during that journey to becoming an attorney. He insists that it is going to be tough at times. However, at the end of the day, you really do learn what being a lawyer is all about.
Founding His Personal Injury Law Firm
Attorney Anthony O. Van Johnson is now at the point where he has managed to set up his own personal injury law firm. This was his dream when he first entered law school, and he still dreams of becoming one of the best trial lawyers in the country.
This stage of his journey is only beginning. Some would say that starting your own law firm means that you have fully made it as a lawyer and your journey is over. Attorney Anthony O. Van Johnson insists it isn’t. In fact, he sees this as another step in the journey toward becoming the lawyer that he truly wants to be, and he is certainly going to get there one day.