| Deuterman Law Group, Press Releases
Firm hires fourth workers’ compensation attorney
The Deuterman Law Group’s newest attorney is a familiar face at the firm.
Casey Spence Francis joined the firm as an associate attorney in the fall, after earning her law degree and being admitted to the N.C. State Bar. Casey previously worked as the firm’s new client coordinator, and she also spent a summer clerking here while in law school.
Casey, who earned her undergraduate degree from N.C. State and her law degree from UNC School of Law, will be focusing exclusively on workers’ compensation cases. In addition to her own cases, she’ll be assisting firm founder Dan Deuterman on his cases and will also be handling some of attorney Bridget Shrader’s caseload while she is on maternity leave.
Casey earned her bachelor’s degree in Spanish and international politics, so she will be working the firm’s Spanish-speaking clients and bilingual paralegals. Casey clearly has an affinity for languages, as she also can speak Modern Standard and Egyptian Arabic. (She keeps her skills sharp by watching Disney movies in Arabic!)
During her sophomore year in college, Casey decided she wanted to attend law school. She’s always known she wanted to pursue civil litigation as a means of helping people.
“I am working with clients who are in genuine need of help,” she said.
Though she was certain of her career path, Casey used her time at UNC to learn about other areas of the law. Prior to graduation, she worked on criminal defense cases as a law clerk at Kurtz & Blum in Raleigh.
“Civil litigation is what I always wanted to do, but I wanted to try criminal law to be completely confident in my decision,” she said. “I didn’t want to close the door on an area of law without knowing what it entailed.”
As a part of her job with Kurtz & Blum, Casey assisted on a high-profile murder case, which was covered widely in the media. The experience was eye-opening, she said, and it taught her a lot about the justice system and the media.
“There’s always more to the story than what the news reports,” she said. “You could watch every minute of a trial and still not get the complete story.”
Outside of her professional life, Casey is very active in volunteer work. She’s an animal lover, with three cats of her own –Carter, Finley and Max. So, it’s no surprise that she’s involved with animal rescue work. In particular, she works with Moratoc Animal Rescue, an organization that finds homes throughout the state for dogs abandoned at shelters in Eastern North Carolina.
Casey has also participated in a number of mission trips, most of them with First Baptist Church in Summerfield. She has helped build an orphanage in Puerto Rico, done roofing work in West Virginia and Alaska and participated in an Arab outreach program in London, two weeks after the London subway bombings in July 2005.
For fun, Casey and her husband love to go scuba diving. It’s a passion she developed in college, after taking a scuba class to fulfill a physical education requirement. They’ve been to Micronesia and Grand Turk, but love going off the coast of North Carolina and into north Florida the best.
But don’t ask her where she’s going next. Rarely do Casey and her husband plan these trips in advance, because you just can’t predict the weather.
“We’ll usually ask, ‘What are you doing this week?’” she said. Then they’ll spontaneously pick a spot and pack their bags for a long weekend of sun, fun and diving.
