Erin R. Stuckey

The fight is personal.

At McGowan, Hood, Felder & Phillips, Erin Stuckey represents individuals and families who have been injured by the negligence of medical professionals. She came to this work after more than 15 years as a litigator at a large defense firm, where she regularly represented rehabilitation hospitals, nursing homes, and medical providers when they were sued by patients and their family members. Wanting to spend the second half of her career representing people, Erin joined McGowan Hood in 2022, and she now devotes her practice to the injured patients and families who were once on the opposite side of her cases. That background gives her a unique perspective: she knows how defense counsel evaluates a case, where they look for weaknesses, and how hospitals and their insurers build a defense, and she puts that insight to work for her clients.

Erin has handled complex, high-stakes litigation from start to finish, first- and second-chairing trials in state and federal courts, taking and defending expert and fact witness depositions across a range of disciplines, and coordinating discovery on sprawling, multi-party matters. She has managed nationwide document reviews involving hundreds of thousands of pages, including foreign language depositions and reviews, and has represented clients in litigation and arbitration involving professional negligence, breach of contract, and negligent credentialing.

What sets Erin apart is preparation and a personal touch. She treats every client as a person, not a case file, and she is a strategic advocate who uses her background to anticipate the opponent’s strategy. For the injured clients she now represents, that means a lawyer who has seen how the defense will try to defeat their claim and who stays steadily in their corner from start to finish. One client wrote that Erin “truly saw me, as a woman, a mother, and a human being with hopes and dreams, not just a client,” adding, “I am deeply grateful for your guidance, candor, and steady presence in my corner.”

Beyond the courtroom.

Erin was born and raised in Dillon, South Carolina. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of South Carolina with a degree in English, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, before earning her law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law. In law school she served as Senior Articles Editor of the ABA Real Property, Probate and Trust Journal and received the journal’s award for Best Student Comment. She has since returned to the classroom as a guest instructor on discovery in Advanced Legal Writing courses at both the University of South Carolina School of Law and the Charleston School of Law.

Outside the office, Erin’s life centers on her family and her community. She and her husband live in the Columbia area with their son, and they are actively involved at Riverland Hills Baptist Church, where they volunteer in the children’s ministry. Throughout her career Erin has also devoted significant time to pro bono service, including successfully overturning, on appeal, a denial of Social Security disability benefits for a disabled client, and serving as a volunteer guardian ad litem for children in the Department of Social Services and juvenile justice systems.