Life & Work with Casey Tuggle

Today we’d like to introduce you to Casey Tuggle.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
As a child of a long and harsh custody case, I knew from an early age what I wanted to do with my life: passionately represent families going through the hardest times of their lives.

After high school, I went to UGA for undergrad (go dawgs!) where I majored in Political Science and Social Work. While in Athens, I interned with the Department of Juvenile Justice. I knew I wanted to someday end up near the Georgia coast, so when Savannah Law School offered me a scholarship, it was a sign. I quickly moved down to Savannah where I began working in personal injury law and attended law school classes at night.

In law school, I met my fiancé Chris, and after passing the bar exam, I took a job as an Associate Attorney at The Manely Firm here in Savannah, where I exclusively work on domestic cases (child custody, divorce, grandparent rights… all the messy stuff).

A lot of people think I’m crazy for doing this for a living, but I wouldn’t want to do anything else. It fuels my passion and solidifies that 11-year-old Casey made the right decision (and made all of this school and student loans worth it!)

While working in personal injury, I developed a love-hate relationship with case management because I was always looking for ways to make things more efficient and for avenues to more effectively allocate resources. After unofficially advising businesses for several months, I decided to launch a consulting business.

C-Space Strategies is my baby, and it’s how I can combine my passion for the law with my skills in business management. As a part of my business, I’m finalizing the development of case management software for law firms and medical practices, which I’m working on with a great friend and colleague of mine.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road here has been pretty full of obstacles, but as with the C-Space motto: challenges are the fuel of success. Truthfully, I don’t trust people who haven’t gone through some sort of obstacle in life. It’s kind of like saying you don’t need therapy… everyone is better because of it.

As I mentioned, I was the kid of a pretty messy custody case. I grew up with various shades of abuse, addiction, etc., so I grew up fast. Luckily, I had my education. School was always my outlet (possibly because I knew it would be my way out of my tiny town), so no matter how little time I had to devote to my homework, I got it done. I knew what I had to do to get to where I wanted to be, so I had to just make it happen.

Fast forward to college, and that’s when mental health became a phrase I even knew existed. It took a bit of time to understand that everyone has traumas that require healing, and after some work, I began to see beauty in those obstacles.

Without challenges, none of us would be who we are, and in a strange way, that can be seen as beautiful, right?

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Working at The Manely Firm is a dream come true. The day I moved to Savannah, I set my eyes on that office, and I knew I’d get there someday. Working under David Purvis and learning from Michael Manely is a blessing I’ll never take for granted.

The Manely Firm, P.C. is a full-service all-family law firm serving clients all around Georgia and all around the world. The firm’s focus is on complex family law cases including domestic and international divorce, custody, parental kidnapping, modification, high asset divorce, same-sex rights, reproductive rights, and family law appeals.

We have multiple offices located in Atlanta, Forsyth, Lawrenceville, Marietta, and (the best one) Savannah. Not only has it been around for over 30 years, but we are truly a family and we treat our clients the same way, and when you’re going through something that would require our retainer, that’s exactly the kind of treatment you need.

My candlelight project, C-Space Strategies, is a business consulting firm that offers an array of services including strategic planning, profit engineering, business leadership training, process management, organizational engineering, and business marketing.

I focus mainly on law practices and medical providers, but I also work with nonprofits, multimedia marketing agencies, and personal brands.

A lot of “business consultants” can only offer business advice, but I’m able to offer a combination of business efficiencies and legal expertise, which allows my clients to receive a premium return on investment (and it’s all about maximizing your return, right?).

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
Family law isn’t going anywhere, and we can all face that, but as with recent SCOTUS decisions and cultural shifts, it’ll be interesting to see the changes we see in the family courtroom.

About ten years ago, our founding attorney Michael Manely unanimously won a case before the United States Supreme Court. Where do I want to go with my career? Right there.

C-Space Strategies is hard at work securing the final pieces for our case management system. Soon, we’ll be able to market it to the public, and I can’t even imagine where that’ll go.

Between my legal career, software development, and working on an individual basis with my consulting clients, my cup stays full. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.