Mary Anne Chardo Johnson is an experienced mediator, attorney, and teacher. A cum laude  graduate of Boston College, Mary Anne holds a B.A. in education and a J.D. from Southern New England School of Law.

 

Mary Anne’s private practice focuses on divorce and family mediation and non-adversarial family law. Mary Anne also provides counsel for a number of individual clients on a wide range of interpersonal and family matters.  Mary Anne has successfully mediated hundreds of disputes associated with separation, divorce, and post-divorce modifications. Mary Anne has been successful in helping even high-conflict divorcing, divorced and never-married clients calmly and rationally create workable, mutually satisfactory separation agreements, modifications and parenting plans. 

 

Before starting her private practice, Mary Anne held a position at the Administrative Office of the Probate and Family Court as Program Coordinator of the Access and Visitation Project, a court-based parent education program for never-married parents. As Coordinator, Mary Anne presented the program weekly to the mostly unrepresented (pro se) litigants in the Suffolk and Middlesex divisions and contributed to the development of written educational materials and updates on court procedures and practices relating to custody, parenting, and child support.

 

Mary Anne has also held the position of Peer Mediation Program Coordinator for Boston Community Leadership Academy as part of the Attorney General's Student Conflict Resolutions Experts (SCORE) Program. For three years Mary Anne taught students methods and life skills for dealing with conflicts without resorting to violence.  Through her work with the SCORE program, Mary Anne mentored aspiring student mediators and successfully mediated disputes between students and other students as well as between students and teachers. 

​

Mary Anne started her mediation practice because of her desire to help people resolve difficult situations and her belief that the best way to accomplish that is by helping the parties in conflict discuss the issues rationally and calmly.  As a mediator, Mary Anne has helped hundreds of people in conflict achieve settlement and create agreements that are fair and equitable and that allow them to take and keep control of their lives. Mary Anne's overall philosophy is reflected in the following quotes from two great lawyers who have been her inspiration:

​

​

  “My joy was boundless. I had learnt the true practice of law. I had learnt to find out the better side of human nature and to enter men’s hearts. I realized the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties driven asunder. The lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases.  I lost nothing thereby - not even money, certainly not my soul.”  --Mohandas Gandhi 

 

“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser--in fees, expenses and waste of time. As a peacemaker, the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.”  -- Abraham Lincoln 

​

​

For more information, please contact Mary Anne Johnson at  mjohnson@mjmediator.com or call 781.856.3173.