John A. ("Jack") Futoran, Sr. has been married to Alice (owner, EZ Street Professional Hair Salon) for 33 fun-filled years, and they have one son, Jack, Jr., (a California Lifeguard/Law Enforcement Officer). Jack, Jr. and his wife Carly (a high school counselor) gave Jack, Sr. and Alice twin grandsons -- Jack and Brandon.

Jack practices only employment law and represents only employees, former employees, and applicants.

As a retired federal employee, Jack is especially skilled at handling administrative claims and lawsuits by city, county, state, and federal government employees.

He is a member in good standing of the California Bar, the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington, D.C.).� He is a member of the Ventura County Bar Association, Ventura County Trial Lawyers Association, and American Mensa, Ltd.� He sits on the Board of Deacons of Ventura Missionary Church (where he also sings in the choir), and is an adjunct Law Professor at the Ventura College of Law and the Santa Barbara College of Law.

Jack was first a personnel specialist and later a management analyst with the government. He had always planned on going to law school after he retired. But when Congress started closing military bases (he was working for the U.S. Navy at the time), he decided to accelerate his plans and started law school at night. His bosses reduced his travel schedule and granted other accommodations and he was able to complete law school on schedule while still performing his job.

Jack passed the California Bar Exam on his first attempt, became a lawyer on May 27, 1998, and used up all his vacation time to serve as co-counsel in a sex harassment trial. The day after he gave the closing argument in the case, the government offered a "golden handshake" to eligible employees and Jack signed up. Since then he�s been a full time lawyer.

Why did Jack choose employment law? Starting when he was a personnel specialist Jack saw that good managers used the rules and regulations to select and promote the best employees. But he also saw a few managers who ignored the rules and regulations in an attempt to promote lesser-qualified employees because of their sex, age, etc. He learned how to stand up to those managers by showing them the rules and, since promoting the more qualified person was good for business, was able to demonstrate why the rules were there. Now that he is an attorney, he uses the law to protect employees from illegal actions. Employment law is more rewarding to Jack because he has a greater sense of accomplishment because he can help people who really need it. He wouldn't be able to do that as much in other areas of law.

Not everyone is ready for a career change at 49. But Jack suggests that everyone think about what they want to do after they retire. He didn't wait until they offered the "golden handshake" to figure out what he wanted to do. He had known all his adult life that he wanted to be civil servant until he retired and then an attorney. Once you know what you want to do, list the prerequisites (in Jack�s case, get admitted to a law school, graduate, bar review, pass the bar exam). Then write a tentative schedule for how long it will take to complete each of the prerequisites and also approximate how much it will cost so you can start saving money. You can follow the steps in the book "What Color Is Your Parachute." by Richard Nelson Bolles. Once Jack knew what he wanted to do and had a timetable for how to do it, all he had to do was adjust the start date from the year 2000 (when he would have started law school) to 1993 (when he actually did start law school).