Karissa P. Blackburn is an associate in the firm’s Charleston office.  She focuses her practice on workers’ compensation defense and general liability including commercial litigation, premises liability, and motor vehicle accidents.

Prior to joining C&W, Ms. Blackburn served as a Habeas Corpus attorney at the West Virginia Public Defender Services in Charleston where she worked on a variety of complex post-conviction matters, including actual innocence, newly discovered evidence, and ineffective assistance of counsel.  Previously, she served as Assistant Public Defender & West Virginia Fund for Law and the Public Interest Post-Graduate Fellow at Public Defender Corp., 13th Judicial Circuit.  During her fellowship, she consistently argued on behalf of her clients drafting motions and appearing in Charleston Municipal and Kanawha County Family Courts.

Ms. Blackburn received her B.S., magna cum laude, from Reed School of Journalism at West Virginia University in 2013.  She then worked as a reporter for a variety of publications before going to law school in 2016, earning her J.D. from West Virginia University College of Law in 2019 where she was selected to the Order of Barristers.  While in law school, Ms. Blackburn served as a student attorney for the West Virginia Innocence Project and was President of the International Law Student Association.