Shealey Law Firm, LLC

Focus and where the firm works

The practice runs from two South Carolina offices. One sits in Columbia, the state capital. The other is in Mount Pleasant, next to Charleston on the coast. The firm says it serves clients from across the state, and the pair of locations gives it a base on both the Columbia side and the coastal side.

Its work sorts into three lines: criminal defense, personal injury, and civil rights litigation. Brothers Brian and Luke Shealey co-founded the firm in 2013. Both came out of public defense, and each worked as a Richland County public defender before it opened. That shared start shapes much of how the site reads. Handling criminal defense, personal injury, and civil rights at once is a broad footprint for a firm this size.

The founders and their public defender roots

Brian Shealey began his career at the Richland County Public Defender's Office, where he spent five years. He then co-founded the firm in 2013. His bio says his work centers on serious criminal charges, among them murder, armed robbery, and burglary.

He also litigates civil rights claims under Section 1983. The site states he is admitted to practice in all South Carolina state and federal courts, which covers both the trial and appeal levels of those systems. In my opinion, the pairing of criminal defense and Section 1983 work is worth flagging, since both put a lawyer in front of a jury on questions of state power. Federal admission also lets him take cases that move from state court into the federal system.

Luke Shealey earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of South Carolina in 2001, then graduated from the New England School of Law. He began as an Assistant Public Defender in Columbia in 2006. For about seven years he represented clients in serious criminal matters, including assault, domestic violence, kidnapping, and murder cases. That is a long stretch of trial exposure before moving into private practice.

The wider team the site names

Arielle Larsen practices with the firm from its Mount Pleasant office. She received her law degree from the Charleston School of Law in 2019. Mikaela Andrews is also listed as an attorney, though the pages reviewed here give no further detail about her. Between them, the named attorneys give the firm coverage on both its criminal and its injury tracks.

The about page names two more lawyers, Chris S. Truluck and Liz Dalzell. Truluck's background runs through criminal defense along with litigation, consumer protection, debt collection, and landlord and tenant matters. Dalzell's is in personal injury, with earlier work in insurance defense and employment law, and she has taught legal writing at the University of South Carolina School of Law.

Both of those bios point to their own separate practices. So, as a reviewer, I read their appearance on the roster as a working relationship rather than proof of full in-house staff. A prospective client can confirm the exact arrangement with the firm.

Practice areas in detail

On the criminal side, the firm describes work on DUI, drug charges, sex crimes, theft, assault, and white collar offenses. It also lists federal charges and felony matters up to murder. The founders' years in public defense line up closely with this focus.

The personal injury side covers car, truck, and motorcycle wrecks. It reaches into medical malpractice, wrongful death, premises liability, and catastrophic injuries. These cases call for different skills than criminal defense, and the firm presents attorneys who work on both tracks. A client with a serious injury claim would be working with a different part of the team than a client facing charges.

Its civil rights work runs under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983. That includes claims of police excessive force and wrongful arrest, along with related whistleblower cases. Section 1983 is a narrower field than the other two, so seeing it named gives a clearer read on where the firm chooses to spend its time. For a client, that focus can matter as much as the headline practice areas.

How the firm presents itself

The site describes service in two areas: Columbia and the Charleston area through the Mount Pleasant office. It states that the offices can be reached around the clock. It also notes Spanish-language service for clients who need it.

The firm keeps profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, YouTube, and LinkedIn. What the public pages do not show is a record in numbers. No case results, settlement figures, or client counts appear in the material reviewed here, so readers who want that kind of proof would need to ask the firm directly.

What the pages do make plain is a steady theme. Two brothers built a defense-rooted practice, then widened it into injury and civil rights work. That common public defender start is the clearest thread a prospective client can follow, and it is the detail I would weigh first.