Jody Meyer has known Iola attorney Bob Johnson since law school, about 25 years. They often joked: “Wouldn’t it be fun to work together again?”
Now, they are.
Meyer recently joined the law firm of Johnson Schowengert, PA. She previously had her own practice in Lawrence and specializes in family law. Meyer will commute from Lawrence to the Iola office where she’ll have an opportunity to work on a greater variety of cases.
Johnson said he is glad to have her join the firm.
“The opportunity to attract and hire an attorney with Jody’s reputation and courtroom experience is a rare feat in rural Kansas. Jody is regarded as one of the best attorneys in Lawrence. She will be able to jump into the legal arena in Southeast Kansas without missing a beat,” he said.
MEYER grew up in Kingman, a town of about 3,000 west of Wichita. She earned her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Kansas.
Right after law school, Johnson hired Meyer at a firm in Hugoton. She moved to Lawrence in 2001.
Earlier in her career, she traveled to other counties for cases and enjoyed seeing different parts of Kansas.
“I wanted to get out and do a greater geographical area and have more flexibility,” she said.
Empathy is a key factor in practicing family law, and Meyer said her personal experience with her own divorce gives her an important perspective. She’s done mediation training and learned that patience is essential.
“There’s a time to be aggressive and a time to not be and I think I know the difference. People come into my office and ask, ‘Are you a bulldog?’ I can be, but the point is you need to not do that until you have to. At the end of the day, you want to resolve things on your own if you can, especially in a case with kids,” she said.
“It’s about redirecting people. Most of the time, people just want to get out of a bad situation. My philosophy is to try to do that as quickly as you can and not let cases get drawn out. It’s not good for people to be in limbo.”
She’s also passionate about helping children. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she obtained a substitute teaching license and worked as a substitute, usually at Lawrence Middle School. She knew online learning was difficult for many students, and wanted to help in whatever way she could to keep kids in the classroom.
“I learned a lot about our school district,” she said. “I’m pretty involved with my kids in school but, like a lot of parents, you probably aren’t visiting the classroom. Going into the classroom and seeing how kids behave is kind of an eye-opener. The number of kids in class, kids on phones, and just general behavior. After COVID, kids in Lawrence were online for so long that it kind of fundamentally changed their communication and emotional state. You could tell when school started back up, they hadn’t been around other kids.”
MEYER has served on a number of boards and volunteer organizations, including the Historic Resources Commission in Lawrence, a children’s development program called TinyK, an executive board for the Kansas Bar Association, and previously as president of the Douglas County Bar Association and board of trustees for the Douglas County Law Library.
