“Earlier this year, your firm assisted my family with a family matter. I wanted to drop you this quick note to let you know how pleased we were with the service that your firm, and you specifically, provided us. We live out of state, so we had to trust that a local Casper firm would serve us well, and you exceeded our expectations. You were extremely professional, approachable, and efficient at all times. I know how infrequently clients may say thank you, so I wanted you to know that we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Williams, Porter, Day & Neville to others with a similar need for legal assistance.”
-Letter from an actual WPDN client
When Steve Emery was a young man, fresh out of law school, he joined the Navy and offered his newly-acquired skills to the JAG Corps. It was there, in the Navy, that Emery first began practicing family law- an area that focuses primarily on divorce proceedings, custody arrangements and disputes, prenuptial agreements, and more. It was the first aspect of the law that Emery really fell in love with and that love was something he carried with him throughout his career.
“When I was in the Navy, I practiced family law and because of the direct client contact, it was really gratifying,” Emery said. “I joined the JAG Corps right out of law school and I was doing legal assistance for sailors and marines and it really taught me a lot. You learn very quickly when you’re dealing with peoples’ real problems. For many years, the majority of my practice has been litigation but, back then, I was working with people who had very personal types of problems, and helping those folks through those kinds of problems was very satisfying for me. You get a tangible kind of result a lot quicker than you would with litigation and practicing family law back then really left a good taste in my mouth.”
When Emery joined Williams, Porter, Day and Neville in 1990, it was a vastly different firm than it is today. Focusing mostly on tort and commercial law, WPDN was still in its formative stages at that point. As the years progressed, WPDN got bigger and bigger, acquiring some of the state’s best attorneys and paralegals while also adding many other points of practice. To date, WPDN has more than ten areas of practice, all of which serve the community in a myriad of ways.
One of the areas of practice that is moving to the forefront of their services is family law. Family is the most important thing to just about everybody, and when legal matters arise, it can be complicated and overwhelming. WPDN attorneys provide much needed counseling and representation during these times. They have successfully guided their clients through divorces, child custody disputes, child support, and visitation matters, as well as adoptions, guardianships, and conservatorships. For Steve Emery, this is a chance to rekindle a love he’s had since graduating from law school, and he relishes the opportunity to help families throughout Natrona County.
“WPDN has identified a need in the community for family law services so, as a strategy, we’ve decided to grow that part of our practice,” Emery stated. “For me, personally, I started doing family law work when I first became a lawyer. I was serving as a judge advocate in the United States Navy and family law was part of my daily duties and I really enjoyed doing it.”
Emery said that WPDN has been expanding its practice to include more family law cases for the past 5 years. Emery was one of the first attorneys to volunteer to take on more family law cases, and he was joined by other extremely talented lawyers like Zara Mason, Amy Iberlin, Craig Silva, and Erica Day- all of whom have the skills and the desire to take overwhelming, volatile situations and, hopefully, make them a little bit easier to handle for all parties involved. And that’s why Emery and his peers became attorneys in the first place- to help people. To be a voice for the voiceless. To change and, in some cases, save lives.
Earlier this year, Emery had the opportunity to do just that.
“Something I did recently that really energized me happened back in early March,” Emery remembered. “I volunteered as part of a pro bono program in Natrona County, and I was able to go to the courthouse and sit there one afternoon and counsel folks that normally don’t have the means to hire an attorney. And most of the questions I was asked were related to domestic relations. And it was very cool and very gratifying to be able to give back and to help some of the underprivileged in Natrona County. It was also further proof that family law should be a major point of our practice.”
And so it has become.
In addition to the multitude of services that WPDN offers, they are expanding their services and focusing even more of their practice on family law. The attorneys at Williams, Porter, Day, and Neville always have the interests of the community on their minds and on their hearts, and their expansion to include even more family law cases is a prime example of that.
“WPDN has the best lawyers in the state of Wyoming,” Emery touted. “Particularly, we have the best litigators and we are now devoting our litigation prowess and experience to this different field of law. Instead of just doing tort law, now we’re devoting time to family law litigation. I think we’re very well positioned within our community in particular, and the state in general, to represent the people of Wyoming in family law matters, just as we do in other types of cases throughout Wyoming and beyond.”