Susan Vanderweert
About Susan Vanderweert
Susan Vanderweert is a Partner at the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin, focused on workers' compensation law. She joined the firm in 2015 after more than 10 years representing insurance companies and employers, and brings 15+ years of total experience.
Vanderweert earned her Bachelor of Arts (double major in Political Science and Communication) from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 1979, where she served as News Director of the college radio station. She earned her Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Duke University in 1999 (with a summer program in English Literature at Exeter College, Oxford in 1995) and her Juris Doctor from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 2002, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation.
She is admitted to the North Carolina Bar and is a North Carolina State Bar Board Certified Specialist in Workers' Compensation Law (certified 2015, recertified 2020).
Her professional memberships include the North Carolina Bar Association, the Wake County Bar Association (Endowment Scholarship Committee), North Carolina Advocates for Justice, and the NC Bar Workers' Compensation Section Council (2021-2022).
Her honors include selection to Best Lawyers (2021-2026), the North Carolina Bar Association Citizen Lawyer Award (2024), the Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent Rating (2024), and the Gressman-Pollitt Award for Outstanding Oral Advocacy (1999).
She published "Seeking Justice for 'Comfort' Women..." in the North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation, Vol. 27, Issue 1.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Law Offices of James Scott Farrin
These results are credited to Law Offices of James Scott Farrin. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
Farrin co-lead counsel Gary Jackson won an $8 million class settlement for roughly 6,500 residents forced from their homes by the 2022 ammonium nitrate fire at the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant, with a separate $4.5 million for affected businesses.
A Johnston County jury awarded $5.1 million to the family of Joan Drake, killed when a driver going 98 mph struck her car as she turned into a Clayton Walmart, after Farrin attorneys Coleman Cowan and Donald Clack tried the case without putting on a single medical bill.
A mother and her two teenage daughters were seriously hurt in an October 2018 head-on crash on North Carolina Highway 49 with a company truck driven by an unlicensed man. After the injury claims were resolved by agreement, a federal court held that the construction company's commercial excess policy covered the accident and that interest was owed on top. The Fourth Circuit affirmed in August 2025, and the family's total recovery reached $2,861,458.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
