Frances Turner Mock has taught at the law school for over 15 years. Currently, she teaches Negotiation and has taught Corporate Counseling and Communication (for upper-level students) and Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing (a required first-year course).
Mock graduated from Duke Law School magna cum laude and received the Law School Community Award. As a student, she was a Senior Editor of the Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems and co-director of the Public Interest Law Foundation. After graduation, she clerked for the Honorable N. Carlton Tilley when he was the Chief Judge for the United States District Court, Middle District of North Carolina.
Mock formerly practiced law with one of North Carolina’s largest law firms representing clients in state and federal court. For more than twenty years she has owned her own law practice specializing in risk management and managing claims for recreation programs. Her clients are mostly large, international non-profits with wilderness-based or international operations. She is counsel for LL Bean’s Outdoor Discovery School, the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), Earthwatch Expeditions, and other organizations. She represented Outward Bound Inc. for about twenty years. She speaks regularly at the Wilderness Risk Management Conference and has spoken at conferences for the Wilderness Medical Society, the Association for Challenge Course Technology, the Association for Experiential Education, and the Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education.
As a Criminal Justice Act Panel Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, Mock represented indigent defendants charged with federal crimes. She was appointed as co-counsel in a death penalty case and obtained a favorable unanimous published opinion from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. She also successfully argued before the North Carolina Supreme Court on behalf of four counties that a state statute imposing a fee on indigent defendants was unconstitutional.
A former professional whitewater rafting guide, Mock still enjoys the outdoors. She has visited more than twenty national parks.
