Jennifer Justice, CEO of legal and startup services company the Justice Department, did not come from a family of high-powered CEOs herself.
"Grandfather was a logger, my dad worked at a store," she says. "All the women in my family were homemakers." But she knew she wanted more. Justice attended the University of Washington for undergrad and eventually decided of all of the professions she'd heard about (on TV, for example), lawyer seemed the most intriguing. Just before attending Cornell Law School, Justice realized she could lean into her love of the arts within the field.
"The grunge years were kind popping off and I was really into music," she says. She realized she could become a music lawyer, negotiating publishing or sponsorship deals for artists, for example.
Justice ended up becoming rapper Jay-Z's lawyer in 1998 and representing him for 17 years. She also started negotiating contracts for executives, men and women alike. And it was doing that work where she saw firsthand the disparities between how the two are treated. An entry-level male director could be offered $130,000, while a senior level female director in the same department $90,000. Justice would hear excuses like "she's fine with it" or "well, her husband makes money. He's John Mayer's manager."
"That's really where my passion for representing women came from," she says.
Today, the Justice Department is a three-part business in which she offers legal services to big names like Salt-N-Pepa, invests in...
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