Susan A. Johnston's documented professional life centers on Boston and the Massachusetts legal profession. Boston's leading law firms, including Ropes & Gray, had long served Harvard University and business clients, and her training and career developed within that legal environment.
Johnston's undergraduate education took place at Wellesley College, which was founded in 1870 by Henry Fowle Durant and Pauline Durant as the Wellesley Female Seminary and renamed Wellesley College in 1873. The college, located in Wellesley, Massachusetts, near Boston, is one of the original Seven Sisters colleges and was among the first women's colleges to have scientific laboratories. She received a Bachelor of Arts in 1975 as a Durant Scholar, summa cum laude.
She then attended Harvard Law School, founded in 1817 and recognized as the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United States. The school, located in Cambridge across the Charles River from Boston, is part of Harvard University. Johnston received her Juris Doctor cum laude in 1978, the same year she was admitted to the Massachusetts bar.
Johnston was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1978, the same year she completed her Harvard Juris Doctor. Her subsequent career was based in Boston, where she served as a partner at Ropes & Gray LLP. Published profiles associate her practice with tax and employment matters, and she is now described as a retired partner of the firm.
Ropes & Gray was founded in 1865 in Boston by John Codman Ropes and John Chipman Gray, both Harvard Law School graduates. The firm initially represented mainly individuals and Harvard University, and after the New York and New England Railroad became a client in 1878 it began shifting toward corporate law. By the 1960s it had grown to nearly 75 attorneys, and it later expanded to more than 1,500 lawyers in offices across the United States, Asia, and Europe.
