Pekarske finds hospice law hospitable

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Meg Pekarske can explain her legal career in one sentence: “Things just sort of happened.”

That was the case after she earned her undergraduate degree and wasn’t sure what to do next. She applied to law school and a few other graduate programs, keeping in mind her father, a teacher, had told her not to become a lawyer.

When she became a lawyer, life took a different turn. Shortly after taking a job at Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren’s Madison office, she met two people, Pekarske said, who would become her mentors: the equity shareholders Mary Michal and Burt Wagner.

Their practice specializing in health care and hospice drew her in. Early on, she worked in long-term care and assisted living.

Michal, though, was trying to get a hospice practice off the ground. Then she retired.

“I had to make a choice about seven years into my career,” Pekarske said.

She chose hospice, much to the delight of the firm’s CEO and chairman, Jerry Janzer.

“She got on the front edge of that early in her career,” he said, “and is now nationally known for that.”

Janzer, though, said there’s more to Pekarske’s commitment to that area of the law than simply taking the role of chairwoman of the firm’s Hospice and Palliative Care Practice. He said she’s passionate about it and spends time working with people in the field.

“She does it for her concern for the hospice industry,” Janzer said, “and need to educate people in hospice care.”

Pekarske, 41, said she considers it a privilege working with hospice clients. But being chairwoman of the practice also comes with its own difficulties.

For instance, no one taught her in law school how to strike a balance between empowering her employees and managing them, she said. Law school also didn’t give her tips on the best way to handle the death of a colleague’s spouse or what to do when an associate leaves to become a nun, Pekarske said.

“I have lived the truth of: You really learn the most through the hard stuff,” Pekarske said.

Building the practice and learning how to manage people hasn’t always been easy, she said, but for someone whose career just sort of happened, she’s not complaining.

“I still can’t believe,” Pekarske said, “I’ve done what I’ve done.”