Professor Spence joined Phoenix School of Law in 2009. Before joining PhoenixLaw, Professor Spence practiced civil litigation and  immigration law both as a solo practitioner as well as with JBM Immigration Group. In her practice she has represented clients in family-based immigration and deportation defense since 2007. In 2006-2007, Professor Spence served as an adjunct professor of Business Law at the Metropolitan State College of Denver in Denver, Colorado where she taught Introduction to the Legal Environment of Business and Advanced Business Law. After graduating from law school, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable John F. Wagner, Jr. in the Fayette County Court of Common Pleas.

While attending the University of Pittsburgh School of Law Professor Spence was involved in several projects abroad. In 2003, she was invited to the Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo as part of a project by the Ministry of Education to improve legal education in Japan. In Tokyo, Professor Spence coached the international moot court team, and instructed students in International Commercial Law. In 2002, she also went to Vienna, Austria to participate in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot Court.

Professor Spence's scholarship focuses on the intersection of International commercial law, and Commonwealth Caribbean  law,  in the post-colonial era, as well as Asylum and Refugee law, in the United States, and internationally. She has written articles on indigenous peoples in Suriname, Kenya, and Costa Rica, and has spoken at conferences sponsored by the National Association of Women in Higher Education, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. In May 2009, Professor Spence presented a paper entitled: “Caliban’s Burden: Exporting the Convention on the International Sale of Goods to the Commonwealth Caribbean” at  the Law and Society Association Conference in Denver, Colorado.