The Healer

When Jane Morrow reflects on some of the proudest moments of her 30-plus years as a medical malpractice attorney, it’s not the big financial settlements and verdicts that come to mind.

“I think about the times where I just showed up for the patient or for the client, at the most vulnerable times of their lives,” says Morrow, who recently completed Red Cross disaster training and is ready for her first deployment. “That’s what’s meant the most: that I was there for them, that I was their advocate. I tried to show them in the best possible way that they were cared for and that someone was fighting for them.”

The law is Morrow’s second career. For seven years, she worked as a critical-care nurse at Tacoma General Hospital. It was a natural fit. Her mother, Joyce Seavecki, graduated from the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps during World War II, and later became nursing director of a community hospital in Wisconsin. Morrow worked there as a nursing assistant, “seeing everything from trauma in the emergency room to the birth of babies,” she says.

Critical-care nursing was where Morrow felt she was meant to be. She says she’s “one of those people” who loved being on the code team and responding to emergency calls throughout the hospital.
“I thrived because it was intellectually challenging and offered a great deal of independent practice,” Morrow says. “Constant vigilance over the patient’s condition was required, as was making split-second decisions.”

She also served on a hospital committee that evaluated the level of care provided. But knowing that not all hospitals maintain the same standards, Morrow became fascinated, after meeting a bioethicist through a continuing education program, by the ethical dilemmas faced by medical professionals.

“Say there’s one organ available. What process is used to decide who gets that organ? When there are end-of-life issues, what are the ethical implications of providing or withholding medical care? These questions go to the core of who we are,” she says.

A lawyer acquaintance encouraged Morrow to go to law school. Even if she never practiced, the friend said, “Law is going to change the way you look at the world. It’s going to change the way you think.”
So, while working full time, Morrow took law classes. The similarities between the practices of law and medicine were immediately clear to her.

“Both pathways follow the same logic and process,” she says. “We identify the issue; something’s wrong that we have to address and it needs to be resolved, so we search the body of knowledge to figure out how to approach it. In medicine, we look at clinical trials and scientific literature, what’s happened in the past. … If your plan doesn’t work, you shift and try another legal theory or course of medication or procedure. It’s very much the same process.”

After graduating from law school, Morrow had a choice to make: continue working as a nurse or challenge herself by taking on something new. The law won.

“I wanted to be empowered to help patients and families more deeply,” she says. As a lawyer, she adds, “I could represent patients and give them the ability to have a level playing field against the medical industry and corporations. The law remains the one great equalizer.”

Working first for a small firm, then for herself, Morrow started practicing general law but soon focused on representing plaintiffs in medical malpractice and personal injury cases.

“This practice is very intellectually stimulating, while it’s also about seeing how you can effect change or give people hope,” she says. One suit Morrow filed on behalf of a client injured during surgery resulted in changes to pre-op safety procedures at the hospital involved.

Morrow recently settled a case in which she represented the family of a 6-year-old boy who died because of a medical error. To say thanks, the family invited Morrow to their home for a traditional Indian meal.

“It meant something to this family, having someone hear their story and acknowledge their pain,” she says. “The grief is not going to be any less, but they were heard, and that might help the healing. … And maybe I’m imagining things, but I felt healing in their home, sharing this beautiful meal.”

The Hardest Word

Jane Morrow believes that being heard can make a difference. “A lot of my clients come to me and say, ‘If they only would have just said “sorry,” I would have never brought this; I just wanted someone to recognize that something went wrong and it wasn’t my fault,’” Morrow says.

“Healing can come in so many forms. It can be experienced through medication, surgery, an apology or a verdict. Sometimes it’s really just human touch. That connection, it’s all about healing—not just in medicine, but in the law as well.”