Family law and personal injury attorney stays true to his roots
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Attorney Spotlight
Family law and personal injury attorney stays true to his roots
By Brian Cox
Attorney David Haselden has small-town roots and is proud of it.
He grew up in Clover, South Carolina, what he calls a “map dot” of a town located in York County where everybody knew one another. There was one stoplight, and the only “traffic jams” were when a half-dozen cars lined up at the light or somebody got stuck behind a tractor moving farming implements.
Haselden spent his youth fishing, hunting, running around in the woods with friends, and playing a number of different sports. His family lived next to a cattle farm, and he spent countless days at an uncle’s farm as well. He recalls the freedom of those days with great fondness.
“It was a good community and I’m still close with a lot of people there,” says Haselden, who now lives in Mount Pleasant, a suburb of Charleston, where he practices family law and personal injury litigation with Rosen Hagood. “I’m proud of being from a small town where you knew everybody.”
His mother was a schoolteacher, and his father was one of the few lawyers in town and he had a general practice that provided whatever legal services a Clover resident might need. Haselden tells the story of waking up one morning to his father asking him who he’d been out with the night before because some boys had gotten in trouble with the law and their parents had called in the middle of the night for advice.
Word got around fast in Clover.
He remembers another time in the 6th or 7th grade when he’d misbehaved, and his teacher told him she was going to talk with his father about it when she saw him Saturday at the Rotary Club barbecue.
Football was a family tradition – his older brother, Brooks, played for the College of William & Mary in Virginia. In high school, the 6-foot, 8-inch Haselden was a stand-out offensive lineman who by some rankings was the No. 4 player in the state and the No. 2 offensive lineman in the Atlantic Coast Conference region. He was considered a Blue Chipper and Impact Player and was recruited by the Clemson Tigers, a perennial football powerhouse.
The demands of playing football at the collegiate level taught Haselden the value of hard work, teamwork, focus, and commitment. He embraced the philosophy underlying an offensive line.
“You have five people trying to work for a common goal,” says Haselden. “Everybody has their own job, and everybody has to do their job for the group to be successful. I enjoyed that and the camaraderie.”
Football also impressed upon Haselden the importance of preparation and thoroughly considering an opponent’s possible moves and countermoves.
“I spend a lot of time trying to make sure I’ve covered every base of what might come up,” says Haselden.
After graduating with a degree in speech and communications, Haselden was unsure of his next steps. He worked for a year for a Charlotte company that manufactured food service equipment and did short stints as a bouncer and a hotel concierge. As he considered future career options, his father and older brother’s footsteps presented a clear path. Law seemed a natural direction.
He enrolled at Charleston School of Law, where he met his wife, Amanda, who is now a magistrate judge for the Charleston Bond Hearing Court. After earning his law degree, he secured a judicial clerkship with fellow Clemson alum, Judge James Williams of the First Judicial Circuit of South Carolina. The two hit it off – the judge was also from a small farming and mill community.
“He was a fantastic guy,” recalls Haselden. “He was an exceedingly fair and reasonable judge.”
Haselden traveled all around the state with the judge, hearing cases that ranged from slip-and-falls to murder. He learned from a judge’s perspective what attorneys should do and should not do; habits to adopt and habits to avoid.
After the clerkship, Haselden joined the public defender’s office to put into practice what he had learned about arguing in court. He started out working in family court where he defended juveniles. It was difficult work but valuable experience because it immediately got Haselden in court and in front of judges, which proved helpful when the following year he went into private practice where he began handling personal injury and family law cases, similar, actually, to what his father had done.
For the next six years, Haselden continued to develop a practice concentrating on personal injury and family law. He honed his skills in writing persuasively and arguing in court. He became a partner in 2017.
In late summer of 2024, Haselden joined Rosen Hagood. The firm’s culture was similar and familiar to that which he had been around throughout his career– hard-working people who are client-focused.
Beyond his professional commitments, Haselden is actively involved in the community. He continues to stay connected with his alma mater through the Tiger Letterman Association and has served a term on the Berkely-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments. For several years, he was chairman of the City of Charleston Board of Architecture Review.
He and Amanda married in 2009 while he was clerking for Judge Williams, and she was working with the Solicitor’s Office for the Fourteenth Judicial Circuit. She was one of the original members of the Solicitor’s Career Criminal Unit and prosecuted violent crimes throughout the entire Fourteenth Judicial Circuit.
“Being married to a lawyer is nice because you have somebody you can commiserate with,” says Haselden.
The couple has two children. Their son, Bennett, is 12, and their daughter, Millie, is 8. Haselden coaches Bennett’s youth football team and now preaches to his kids the same instructions his high school and college coaches preached to him.
The family lives in Mount Pleasant, and Haselden laments a bit that his kids don’t have the same freedom he did growing up to just jump a fence and go fishing for hours. He misses his hometown the most during the fall hunting season, when he once had thousands of acres to roam and could wander in the woods, enjoying the peace.
But Haselden’s small-town origins continue to inform his practice.
“I've represented some people that are Ivy League educated, and then I’ve represented individuals that quit school in the eighth grade and started a business with a single pickup truck and have grown that into a successful business,” says Haselden. “I think you get a better perspective on the world being from a small town. You’re taught to deal with people from different walks of life. I think it helps me connect with clients from white-collar society and clients from more humble beginnings.”