Former Dow Jones Reporter. Plaintiff-Side Defender.
25 years making sure the full story gets told — not just the defense’s version. No account managers, no junior staff fielding your calls.
From the Newsroom to the Courtroom
I’m the principal of Oliver & Ginger, and I’ve worked in plaintiff litigation communications for twenty-five years. Before that, five years as a reporter at Dow Jones.
I know what it takes to get a story placed, because I’ve been on the receiving end of the pitch. That’s not a credential you can hire. It’s a perspective you either have or you don’t.
“A corporate giant once sent someone to go through my trash. I opened the back door and said make sure you take it to the curb.”
Susan and I are best friends and live in the same neighborhood. We share a heart for victims — years ago, that led us to start the Women’s Innocence Clinic together, helping wrongly convicted women. We don’t accept donations, but we do accept help. Outside the firm, I’m the mother of two grown children, a lawyer and a teacher — and a soft touch for rescues: a Maine Coon and a Cavachon who run the house most days.
Billion-dollar companies don’t just defend lawsuits — they retain communications firms to shape public perception before your complaint is ever filed. This is standard practice against plaintiff attorneys in mass tort, MDL, class action, and catastrophic injury cases: AmLaw 100 firms building the legal defense narrative, national crisis-PR shops managing the public record.
I built a plaintiff-side practice to give your case that same rigor and reach — running toward the story instead of waiting to react to theirs.
This pattern shows up again and again in the matters I’ve worked: an institution knew, said nothing, and people were harmed until the public narrative forced accountability. Johns Hopkins Hospital is one example — the full story is on the Results page. It isn’t the only one I’ve worked.
I was once the junior person on a case — no idea what I was actually doing, sent in because someone senior had somewhere else to be. That’s why no one under ten years touches your account here.
No pitch-and-ditch: I answer the phone because I run the agency — the person who sells you is the person doing the work. And I scale up and down with the matter, so you’re never paying for bench you don’t need.
The reporters and producers I call have been on my list for twenty years — not pulled from a database the week your complaint is filed. Across mass tort, class action, and catastrophic injury litigation, I’ve worked matters involving more than 9,000 claimants, and every one got a dedicated strategy. Nothing here is templated.
I lead and personally start every single engagement from day one. You always have my direct line. When the volume of an MDL or massive coordinated proceeding demands scale, I scale quickly.
I maintain a vetted bench of communications and media specialists matched precisely to the matter — aviation, toxic torts, environmental contamination, or mass product liability. No one with less than ten years touches your account.
When a Case Runs Long, We Stay in Touch With the Plaintiffs.
Mass torts and MDLs can take years. Dr. Susan W. Oliver makes sure no one waiting on a case goes silent for months or has to turn to a forum for answers.
Litigation like this can run for years, and even the best law firms run out of bandwidth to stay in personal touch with every plaintiff for that long. Susan does — under the strict direction of retained counsel, never practicing law herself. She's the steady voice checking in, explaining where things stand, and making sure no one feels forgotten while a case moves at a lawyer’s pace, not a person’s.
She brings an unusual combination to that work: an undergraduate degree in pharmacy and a Ph.D. in holistic healing and trauma. Outside the firm, she and her husband raised three children — all three now engineers.
