Amy Pigg Shafer’s Bio

Ms. Shafer is originally from southwestern Ohio. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana in 1993. She earned her law degree in 1996 from The Ohio State University where she was a member of The Ohio State Law Journal. She was admitted to practice law in Ohio in 1996 and in West Virginia in 1997. Ms. Shafer is admitted to practice before all state and federal courts in Ohio and West Virginia.

Ms. Shafer began her legal career in Wheeling with the law firm of Phillips, Gardill, Kaiser & Altmeyer where she practiced general civil litigation, banking, and commercial law. She served as the municipal court judge for the City of Glen Dale, West Virginia from 1997 through 1998. Thereafter, Ms. Shafer joined the Wheeling office of the Pittsburgh-based insurance defense firm of Burns, White & Hickton in 1998. Later, Ms. Shafer worked in Steubenville, Ohio at the Philadelphia-based insurance defense firm of Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin where she handled cases throughout West Virginia and eastern Ohio.

In 2002, Ms. Shafer began her tenure as the senior attorney in the Wheeling Trial Division office of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. While employed by the Nationwide Trial Division, Ms. Shafer represented Nationwide’s policyholders in automobile accidents, ATV accidents, homeowner’s claims, dog bites, and slip and falls. She also had occasion to represent Nationwide’s commercially insured policyholders, including restaurants, excavation companies, contractors, apartment buildings, and other businesses who were sued under their commercial policies for a myriad of reasons.

While with Nationwide, Ms. Shafer handled cases up and down the Ohio River from New Cumberland to Parkersburg and up and down the I-79 corridor from Morgantown to Clarksburg. In her many years of insurance defense practice, Ms. Shafer handled small property damage claims to cases that resolved for 1 million dollars.

She has retained and deposed numerous liability and medical experts during her time as a defense attorney. Ms. Shafer successfully tried cases in the Northern Panhandle and in Morgantown, Fairmont, and Clarksburg. She has participated in hundreds of mediation sessions and has argued before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Ms. Shafer is a member of the West Virginia State Bar, the Ohio County Bar Association, and the Ohio State Bar Association.

Ms. Shafer has also handled numerous family court and criminal cases in addition to representing parties in these matters, she has also served as a guardian ad litem for children in both family court and abuse and neglect court matters. She has completed the training required by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to be appointed as a GAL for children in family court cases and circuit court abuse and neglect court cases.

 Ms. Shafer has lived in the Wheeling, West Virginia area since 1996. She has a middle school aged son who loves to learn, play sports and be outdoors. She attends the Vineyard Church, enjoys working in her yard, loves kayaking and rafting, and making the most of free time with family.