Daniel Johnson ’04 and Juan Garcia ’04 — best friends since they were first-semester study partners at South Texas College of Law Houston — recently made a generous $500,000 gift to their law school alma mater to establish the Johnson Garcia LLP Endowed Judicial Lecture Series.
“This annual lecture series will provide opportunities for students to have meaningful engagement with members of the judiciary,” Johnson said. “The form it takes each year will be determined by the opportunities that present themselves — perhaps a panel discussion, CLE, or Q&A.”
For example, a lecture and discussion session may be connected to a visiting court. In recent years, both the Texas First Court of Appeals and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals have heard cases on the South Texas Law campus — allowing students to observe the judicial system at work.
“I am delighted that Daniel and Juan are so generously supporting the judicial lecture program,” said Katherine T. Vukadin, South Texas Law’s Charles Weigel II Research Professor of Law. “When judges come to campus, students learn about civil procedure, advocacy, professionalism, and so much more. Students might, for the first time, consider clerking or a having career in the judiciary. With this generous gift, we can increase our student-centered events and programming around judicial visits.”
Johnson (left) is a founding partner of Johnson Garcia LLP, a plaintiff, personal injury firm in Houston. Before graduating as valedictorian from South Texas Law, Johnson won multiple national and state moot court championships and was an articles editor for the South Texas Law Review.
After completing law school, Johnson served in clerkship positions in the Southern District of Texas for Federal District Court Judges John D. Rainey and Gray H. Miller.
Garcia co-founded Johnson Garcia LLP in 2016. He is the first Hispanic member to serve on the executive committee of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and he was unanimously chosen to chair the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority board of directors last fall.
“My friendship with Daniel has been so important in my life,” Garcia said. “I was able to ride his coattails all through law school — it was an incredible opportunity and benefit for me to study with such a brilliant student from the very beginning. It all started there in our little breakfast section; we sat at the same round table and started a conversation. Ultimately, we discovered we were from the same small town in Brazoria County, and we recognized each other’s strengths and weaknesses.”
Throughout law school, Garcia said he and Johnson complemented one other — one a lengthy writer, one more concise; one more introverted, the other outgoing — and they have continued to do that since they left senior partnerships at other law firms to begin their own nearly a decade ago.
“We looked at starting our own firm for years, but we kept getting promoted and working on important cases,” Johnson said.
They finally decided to make the leap. “We talked one day and realized we were going to miss the opportunity to have our firm if we didn’t get going,” Garcia said. “We laughed and called it our mid-life crisis. Instead of sports cars, we quit our jobs and opened a firm.”
While both Johnson and Garcia love South Texas Law and have stayed connected, Garcia’s recent community leadership roles take most of his volunteer time.
“I got involved with the rodeo and with sports; come on, pinch me!” Garcia said. “I’m getting to do things I enjoy, and I’m busy meeting professional athletes I grew up admiring. I love that.”
Johnson has enjoyed sharing his time and expertise at the law school. He recently served as moderator for several Career Resource Center events regarding the judiciary as well as speaking at the South Texas Law Review’s Ethics Symposium. Johnson is also a member of the South Texas Advocacy Strategic Planning Committee and otherwise makes himself available for South Texas speaking opportunities where he can offer something useful to students.
Both alumni were delighted to support the Judicial Lecture Series to help students connect to judges. “For us, the judiciary plays a tremendously important role in our profession and from a societal standpoint,” Johnson said.
Johnson and Garcia believe the more exposure law students get to the judiciary during law school, the better attorneys they will become after graduation. Also, perhaps, they will gain new perspectives on serving as part of the judiciary.
“It’s hard to think about becoming a judge when you are just beginning in the profession,” Johnson said. “The best training for that is to become an excellent lawyer first. In an ideal world, the judiciary is the cream of the crop of our profession. We hope our gift will open the door for some of the law school’s best students to think, ‘I may want to do this someday.’”
