Mr. Paschal was born in Hopkins, South Carolina on October 23, 1952. He attended Lower Richland High School. He graduated from Wake Forest University in 1974 and received his Juris Doctorate degree from Wake Forest Law School in 1979. He began his legal career as an Assistant Public Defender in November 1979, leaving the Public Defender's Office two years later to begin his private practice. With the end of the Furman versus Georgia moratorium and the reintroduction of the death penalty, he became actively involved in defense of capital cases and defended seven defendants charged at the trial level and three in the post conviction applications. Of the trials, two resulted in verdicts of acquittal which are two of the only three verdicts of not guilty in capital cases in Greenville County over the last 20 years. After going into private practice, he began to emphasize primary practice in civil litigation although he continued to be involved in criminal cases.

He has served on the Board of Governors for South Carolina Trial Lawyers Association for eight years and has been a repeated lecturer trial advocacy for both Trial Lawyers Association and South Carolina Bar. He currently has an "AV rating" with Martindale-Hubbell, the nation's premier legal directory.