June 19, 2025
The Problem Solver – First as a nurse, now as a litigator, Tammy White-Farrell has put analytical thinking to good use
Published in 2025 West Virginia Super Lawyers magazine
By Natalie Pompilio on April 21, 2025
Tammy White-Farrell has practiced law for more than 30 years, but she still uses the skills she honed during her time as a registered nurse. Both jobs, she notes, require focus, creative problem-solving and compassion.
“A good nurse, like a good counselor, is an analyst and an educator as well as a caregiver,” says White-Farrell, 61, co-founder of Farrell & Farrell in Huntington, where she works with husband Michael Farrell and son Robert White. “I’m a very analytical thinker and I enjoy solving problems. Every day when I come to work, there’s a new problem.”
If that’s ever not the case? “That’s when I need to find something else to do,” she says.
White-Farrell now leads her firm’s health care practice and estimates she’s served as first or second chair for more than 70 trials. “I used to feel like settlements were a bad thing,” she says, “but as I’ve matured in my career, I understand negotiated resolutions and settlements serve an important function.”
Still, she loves the courtroom.
“It’s the art of persuasion, the art of communication. I feel relaxed and engaged,” she says. “When you do critical care or oncology nursing, you have to be on 24/7. You can’t let something slide. In the courtroom, I’m known for paying attention to detail.”
White-Farrell had what she describes as a “very traditional upbringing” in Appalachia. She was the first woman in her family to go to college, attending the Ohio State University on the scholarship she earned as valedictorian of her high school class. She was interested in becoming a doctor, but everyone told her “that was a job for a man,” she remembers.
Instead, she studied nursing. She was immediately drawn to cancer care and “the chemistry, the science, the ways that medicines worked to attack cancer cells.” After graduation, she began working in oncology, and in transplant medicine. “We did have success in curing or prolonging life, and that made it worthwhile,” she says.
Seven years into her career and newly working in hospital administration, she decided to attend law school at night to better understand the regulations she was dealing with during the day. Instead, she switched professions.
“I realized that I could have more autonomy and independence, and use my brain in a more intellectually satisfying manner, as a defense attorney, as a litigator,” she says.
White-Farrell graduated from the Northern Kentucky University’s Salmon P. Chase College of Law in 1993. She entered the field with the words of one influential professor in mind: “He said, ‘Always be curious. As long as you’re curious, you’ll be a success.’”
At her new firm, some of her earliest assignments involved finding expert witnesses. In one case, she remembers, the opposition’s expert admitted he’d learned everything he knew on the relevant subject area from one of White-Farrell’s experts.
“That’s an example of being intellectually curious and very analytical: going to find the best of the best,” she says.
Despite her background, she initially avoided cases involving medical malpractice, fearing she’d be pigeonholed.
“Practicing general law before I went into a specialty has given me a very good foundation,” she says. “I encourage any young lawyer [to do the same].”
Eventually, though, White-Farrell did take cases involving medicine and, when she did, “I found my sea legs,” she says. “That’s a good part of my practice today.”
White-Farrell believes her ability to communicate with jurors is essential to her success.
“It’s about knowing your audience, connecting with your audience,” she says.
In 2011, White-Farrell completed a master’s of public health degree from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. While she doesn’t want to return to bedside care, she can envision volunteering in that area after she retires.
Which won’t be anytime soon. “I’ve got too much responsibility,” she laughs.
