Casandra L. Thomson
Clinical Professor of Law
Director of Negotiation & Dispute Resolution Education
Director, Program on Negotiation & Dispute Resolution

Casey Thomson is a Clinical Professor of Law and the Director of Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Education. She also directs Duke Law’s Program on Negotiation & Dispute Resolution. She teaches upper-level courses in Negotiation, Mediation Advocacy, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Exploring the Roles of Gender and Culture in Negotiation. She also teaches first-year Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing, and is a lecturer in the 1L Professional Development Program. Thomson will also serves as a faculty member for the Duke-Leiden Institute in Global and Transnational Law. Thomson received the law school's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2018.

In addition to teaching at the Law School, Thomson routinely conducts negotiation workshops for programs within Duke Medical School and for international law firms. She has been a visiting scholar and lecturer in ADR at Mackenzie University in São Paulo, Brazil. Thomson is one of four lead trainers approved by the North Carolina Dispute Resolution Commission to teach the 40-hour North Carolina Superior Court Mediator Training Program, which she does twice a year. Thomson served as the Co-Chair of the ABA's Legal Education in Dispute Resolution Committee from 2022 to 2024.

When she is not teaching, Thomson is regularly mediating matters in North Carolina and in New York. Thomson is a certified mediator with the International Mediation Institute, and a certified mediator in North Carolina Superior Court. Thomson is also a CDRC Mediator with the New York Peace Institute, through which she conducts community, small claims, housing, and surrogate’s court mediations in New York City. She is certified by the New York State Education Department to mediate special education disputes in New York. Thomson also works with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to conduct mediations in cases arising under the Americans with Disabilities Act and with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to conduct mediations of pre-investigation employment discrimination claims in New York.

Prior to joining the Duke Law faculty in 2015, Thomson was an attorney with Latham & Watkins LLP in Los Angeles and Chicago. She was a member of the litigation department, and her practice focused on complex commercial litigation, including antitrust, RICO, fraud, employment discrimination, and insolvency-related matters. She regularly practiced in both state and federal courts and she appeared in arbitral proceedings before the Players’ Status Committee of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association and the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Thomson clerked for the Honorable John F. Walter of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

Thomson received her J.D., cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School in 2000, and her B.A. with distinction in political science from the University of Michigan in 1998. She is a member of the bars of North Carolina, California (inactive), and Illinois (inactive), as well as a number of federal district and federal appellate courts.

Casandra L. Thomson

Recent Courses

Legal Writing Faculty
Resident Faculty
Program on Negotiation & Dispute Resolution