Valerie Johnson

Valerie’s mission is to help injured people and working people in North Carolina.  She is a native of Henderson, NC and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC Law School, with honors.  Valerie practices personal injury and workers’ compensation law.

Valerie’s second book, North Carolina Workers’ Compensation Law: A Practical Guide to Success at Every Stage of a Claim, is now in its fourth edition.   Valerie has been board certified as a specialist in workers’ compensation law since 2000.  

At the North Carolina Advocates for Justice, the state’s organization for plaintiffs’ lawyers, she served as the 2022-2023 President, and is currently the Immediate Past President. Valerie was appointed to the NC Bipartisan State Board of Elections by Governor Roy Cooper in March 2018.  She became a member of the Board of Directors of Lawyers Mutual Liability Insurance Company of North Carolina in 2015. She is listed in The National Black Lawyers Top 100.

Valerie teaches trial advocacy at UNC Law School and has taught workers’ compensation law at the Wake Forest University School of Law.  In 2021 Valerie received the Charles L. Becton Award for excellence in teaching trial advocacy.

Other lawyers have recognized Valerie’s work:  she is recognized in Best Lawyers in the areas of workers’ compensation law.  She was admitted to the National Academy of Social Insurance in 2011 and to the College of Workers Compensation in 2015.  She has been recognized in North Carolina Lawyers Weekly as a Leader in the Law, Top Woman in the Law, and as a Top Workers’ Compensation Lawyer.

Valerie and her husband Sam for 30 years. They have two children, Alex and Sam III, and a dog named Maxie.  They appeared on HGTV’s Love It or List It and had a lot of fun renovating their Durham home on TV.