Alamance County commissioner Craig Turner has set off on a new path in his career as a lawyer that promises to bring him ever closer to the community he represents.
Earlier this week, the Vernon Law Firm in Burlington announced that Turner had joined its roster of local attorneys after successfully plying his trade in the Greensboro offices of the nationally-renowned Fox Rothschild law firm.
Turner, who originally joined the board of commissioners in 2021, says that he shifted his law practice from Fox Rothschild to Vernon about three weeks ago in order to consolidate his lifelong ties to Alamance County.
“Fox Rothschild is a great firm, and I enjoyed my time there,” Turner explained in an interview Wednesday. “But I felt the time was right to just have a local practice and do sophisticated work for local clients.”
A native of Alamance County, Turner originally entered the legal profession in 2010 after an eight-year stint as a Navy aviator following his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1995. After a brief turn as a law clerk to the North Carolina Business Court, he joined the
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Greensboro-based law firm of Smith Moore Leatherwood before a year and a half as a prosecutor with the office of Alamance County’s district attorney. In 2018, Turner left the D.A.’s office for Fox Rothschild, a national law firm with over 1,000 attorneys and 29 offices from Seattle, Washington to Miami, Florida.
Turner contends that he had a rewarding experience during his four and a half years with Fox Rothschild, where he specialized in corporate law, construction law, and handled civil litigation for law enforcement. He nevertheless concedes that his work was often far removed from any of the goings-on in Alamance County.
“I was doing arbitration in Vegas,” he recalled, “and working on cases, through Philadelphia, in Illinois.”
In 2021, Turner made a fateful shift toward a more local orientation when he applied for a vacant position on Alamance County’s board of commissioners. Turner ultimately received this post from the local Republican Party, and in November of 2022, he was elected outright to a four-year term on the county’s governing board.
Turner insists that his new post with the Vernon Law Firm is a much better fit with his role as a county commissioner, and it will allow him to spend more time with his children, who attend school at Williams and Highland Elementary in Burlington.
As the Vernon Law Firm’s newest associate, Turner will continue to specialize in business law, with potential forays into other areas like zoning and family law. In the meantime, he looks forward to becoming better acquainted with his new firm, which boasts a 90-year tradition of serving clients in the Burlington area.
“It’s good to be with a law firm that has such deep roots in Alamance County,” he said.
