Ashley Andes Cooper

Ashley is a graduate of the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, where she focused her studies on trial advocacy and criminal law. During law school, she interned with the Honorable John S. McLellan, III, of the Second Judicial District in Sullivan County, Tennessee.

Ashley primarily concentrates her practice in the areas of criminal law, juvenile criminal defense, juvenile dependency proceedings, family law, DFCS cases, and appellate law. She has extensive trial experience, both in the Juvenile Courts of Georgia and the Superior Courts of Georgia.

Prior to entering private practice, this Macon lawyer was an Assistant District Attorney in the District Attorney’s Office for the Macon Judicial Circuit where she worked for several years. During that time, she screened all juvenile cases that went through the DA’s Office, deciding what to prosecute, what plea bargains to accept, and which cases would need to be tried before the Juvenile Court, which is a non-jury proceeding.

After handling thousands of cases in the DA’s Office, Ashley decided that she would spend the rest of her career committed to defending teenagers, not locking them up. In 2013, Ashley started her own law firm, where she built her practice focusing on civil litigation, domestic relations, criminal defense, juvenile defense, juvenile dependency proceedings, and criminal appeals.

Ashley grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee, where her father is a second-generation veterinarian. Despite her love of animals, she realized that she wanted to be a trial attorney while she was studying at East Tennessee State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Honors English and in Political Science. Based on experiences of friends and classmates in college, Ashley realized that she especially wanted to help young people, like college students, to stand up for themselves and their rights in court.