Stephen New

Stephen P. New is a trial lawyer in Beckley, West Virginia, and the founder of Stephen New & Associates. For more than twenty years he has represented injured West Virginians in personal injury, wrongful death, and employment discrimination matters, along with medical malpractice, civil rights, and environmental cases. The son of a coal miner and a teacher, he has built a statewide practice on relentless case preparation and a willingness to take the largest corporations in the country to trial.

New was raised in Gilbert, West Virginia, in a family whose history is woven through the coal country of the state’s southern coalfields. His interest in the law took root early. In eighth grade he won the Golden Horseshoe, West Virginia’s statewide history award, and the mock trials he took part in that year convinced two of his teachers that he was a natural for the courtroom. A local trial lawyer he shadowed in high school handed him a business card and told him to write his own name on it and carry it in his wallet as a reminder of what a lawyer could do for people; he still keeps the card.

The path to law school ran through the military. Unable to afford college on his own, New enlisted and served in the West Virginia Army National Guard, using the discipline and the income it provided to graduate from Marshall University debt-free in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. He went on to the West Virginia University College of Law, where he earned his Juris Doctor in 1998, graduated Order of the Barristers, served as Chief Justice of the Moot Court Board, and competed on the school’s trial and appellate advocacy teams. He knew from his first year that he wanted to represent plaintiffs, joining what is now the American Association for Justice while still a law student. He retired from the National Guard as a Major in 2009.

New’s decision to fight for individuals rather than corporations grew directly out of where he came from. He often recounts a family and regional history of large out-of-state companies acquiring the coal, timber, and mineral rights of West Virginians for a fraction of their worth, and of grandfathers and great-grandfathers who worked and died in the mines before workers’ compensation or Social Security existed. That David-and-Goliath inheritance, he says, made it impossible for him to imagine joining the side that represented the big corporations.

After law school he joined Pamela A. Lambert’s practice in Gilbert in 1999, then opened his own office in Beckley in May 2004. One of the cases he considers most defining came early. A widow named Diana Dickerson walked into his office in tears after a newly privatized workers’ compensation insurance carrier cut off the benefits she was owed until death or remarriage, and her home was auctioned on the courthouse steps. New and a handful of other lawyers took the widows’ cases to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and won, restoring the benefits. He describes it as one of the proudest moments of his early career.

Over the course of his practice New has tried fifty-five cases to jury verdict and has made eight appearances before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. His trial work has spanned motor vehicle collisions, medical malpractice, employment discrimination, and environmental and toxic tort cases. He was co-lead counsel for the nursing students in the Mountain State University litigation, won a 2018 trial representing female basketball players in the Alderson Broaddus University case, and has litigated mass environmental damage claims and cases involving the Beckley VA Medical Center on behalf of veterans. In 2017 he joined the Opioid Justice Team, representing thousands of children and individuals harmed by the opioid epidemic, and he has more recently taken on West Virginia’s jail and corrections system, advocating for humane conditions and pursuing Section 1983 civil rights claims.

Much of his current docket looks to the state’s next chapter. He is involved in coal-related injury and environmental litigation, including disputes over coalbed methane and the extraction of rare earth elements from old mine works, and his firm is pursuing data center litigation in five West Virginia counties, arguing that the world’s largest technology companies owe the communities that host their data centers responsible development and fair taxation. He frames it as the newest version of a century-old fight against the country’s most powerful corporations.

New also keeps an unusual sideline representing professional wrestlers. A law school brief he wrote about a case involving Jim Cornette and the Midnight Express eventually led to a friendship and a steady stream of clients from the wrestling world, including members of the Rock and Roll Express, Shane Douglas, and the widow of Road Warrior Animal in a trademark dispute. He has become an advocate for treating wrestlers as employees rather than independent contractors and for giving them the kind of union protections and pensions that other professional athletes receive.

New is active in the American Bar Association and the American Association for Justice, and he served as President of the West Virginia Association for Justice from 2018 to 2019, when he was also named its Member of the Year. He has been selected to Super Lawyers each year since 2016. Beginning in 2026 he will sponsor and coach the West Virginia University College of Law trial and appellate advocacy teams. He lives in Beckley with his wife, Amy, and credits his approach in the courtroom to preparation above all else, telling clients that while he can promise no outcome, he can promise them his best work.