Hidden Gems: Meet Ashley-Nicole Russell of AN|R Law

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley-Nicole Russell.

Hi Ashley, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself

My family’s past has a lot to do with the passion that I have for what I do. When I was choosing a law school, I wanted a law school that focused on Alternative Dispute Resolution processes since I was a mediator. I was a certified mediator for the district court during undergrad at Appalachian State University. I really started to see how conflict resolution was very efficient whenever dealing with mediation and collaborative processes and I wanted to be able to provide that to people who didn’t really know those processes existed.

I chose to go to law school in Durham and I got a Dispute Resolution Institute Certification along with my Jurist Doctor. After that, I was the first practicing collaborative attorney in Eastern North Carolina. I learned and trained in Raleigh under Mark Springfield who helped to create collaborative divorce in North Carolina. Then, directly out of law school, I took that to Raleigh and east and created collaboratively in the Eastern part of the state where it didn’t exist before.

The first office I opened was in Greenville, NC providing collaborative divorce and meditation options to people who are going through conflict around their marriage and are getting divorced and separated. Then the second office that I opened was in Raleigh. Going back to the triangle was important to me because of my connections there with my original mentors and my law school. The time I spent in Durham working for different parts of the legal field and in Raleigh, I wanted to go back to that area and help to provide my services there so I was able to open that office.