With nearly 30 years of experience, Joanne knows the ins and outs of asbestos litigation as well as she knows her own name.
Joanne first joined the legal field in 1995 when she took a position as a secretary in the mass tort department of a Philadelphia law firm. She soon discovered that she was fascinated by law and by the complexity of asbestos litigation, and she later progressed to paralegal work and also served as her firm’s asbestos settlement coordinator.
At Husch Blackwell, Joanne assists with asbestos and other toxic tort litigation for global companies, including a multinational conglomerate corporation she worked with extensively at a previous firm. She regularly works with medical records, Medicare paperwork, discovery materials, court pleadings, depositions and trial preparation, and she draws frequently on her settlement coordinator experience. Joanne continues to draft settlement releases and coordinate the documents required for draft payments, and she is in regular contact with clients and opposing counsel.
Joanne has always thrived on consistency and routine—a character trait that makes the mass tort world a perfect fit. She’s deeply familiar with the patterns and processes of asbestos litigation, and she’s extremely organized, with a checklist for everything. Above all, though, Joanne is known as a people person: in many cases, she’s worked with the plaintiff’s firm in question for decades, and she has excellent rapport with opposing counsel that helps wrap matters up quickly and efficiently. She also enjoys building relationships with clients, who know they can count on her to ensure that every need in a case is taken care of.