Theresa C. Mahfood has been practicing law since 2017. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, where she earned her J.D. and a certificate in healthcare law in 2015. She received her bachelor’s degree in Global Economics and Modern Language from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008. There, she was also a premedical student. She is admitted to the State Bar of Georgia, The Court of Appeals of Georgia, the Supreme Court of Georgia, and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. She is also a member of the American Bar Association, the Atlanta Bar Association, and the Georgia Association for Muslim Lawyers.

Attorney Mahfood joined The Law Offices of Careton R. Matthews as an associate in May 2019. Her specialties are criminal defense and premises liability, and she occasionally assists with medical malpractice cases. She interacts with clients regularly, keeping them updated about their cases through telephone calls and email, scheduled appointments, jail visits, and court appearances. Her sharp analytical skills, team-oriented mindset, creativity, and compassion for people from all walks of life, make her an exceptional asset to the firm. She excels at legal writing and research and enjoys drafting many of the firm’s particularized motions, briefs, petitions, and request letters. She also represents clients in court, handling bond and probation revocation hearings, negotiated pleas, calendar calls, and motions hearings. She further assists lead counsel, Careton Matthews Sr., on most jury trials. In 2019, she served as co-counsel with Attorney Matthews Sr. on a murder case in which the jury found the Defendant not guilty on all eighteen counts of the indictment. In 2021, she earned the Avvo Clients’ Choice Award.

Before working with the firm, Attorney Mahfood gained experience in the health law field during a short stint as corporate counsel for MedSide Healthcare. In 2018, her law review article, Sovaldi: The High Price for a Cure, was published in the Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences. Prior to that, she worked as an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) research fellow under the tutelage of Dr. Jonca Bull at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with the Office of Minority Health. While still in law school, she was honored for her contributions as a member of the FDA’s Language Access Plan Steering Committee, working under President Obama’s mandated Language Access Plan.

Attorney Mahfood was born in Washington Heights, New York, and grew up in various towns and cities in New York, Florida, Tennessee, and Georgia. She is of Jamaican and Puerto Rican heritage. She is married to a fellow Georgia Tech graduate, Rodney F. Sumlin Jr. In her free time, she enjoys creative writing; studying science, history, and philosophy; cooking; traveling; and sports. She has worked towards diminishing social and economic inequalities for over a decade through various avenues including community outreach, grassroots activism, youth mentoring programs, and public health projects; and believes strongly in criminal justice reform. She currently resides in Gwinnett County, Georgia.