PRACTICE
Ashe practices in two primary areas: • information technology law and • corporate, commercial, and business law. His work includes a broad range of commercial transactions, especially those related to use of computers and the internet. Ashe has over 25 years of experience with technology transactions including development, licensing, cloud and SaaS subscriptions, outsourcing and managed services, tech transfer, cyber and information security, and data privacy. He also assists clients with business contracts, organizing new businesses, financial transactions such as commercial loans and raising capital, mergers & acquisitions, strategic alliances, and joint ventures.
EXPERIENCE
Following graduation from law school, Ashe was a law clerk to Burley Mitchell, Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Then, he practiced in business, government relations, and litigation with The Sanford Holshouser Law Firm in Raleigh. Ashe returned to Charlotte in 1999 and started Lockhart + Hoffman, working with startups and tech companies. Two years later, he merged his firm with Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice (now known as Womble Bond Dickinson), where he continued to focus on tech and commercial law. After several years, he transitioned from “big law” to a small tech and business boutique firm, where he practiced for 12 years before he was made Assistant General Counsel at Compass Group USA to head up their tech and privacy law.
Ashe’s diverse background includes six years in banking and insurance following completion of the management training program at First Union (now Wells Fargo). Ashe was an electronic warfare signals intelligence operator in the U.S. Army, where he was in the Invasion of Grenada as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. He then served with the National Security Agency on the development and deployment of a special electronic mission aircraft (SEMA) system for use in Central America under the direction of the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command during the height of the Cold War.
EDUCATION
Ashe received his juris doctor from the UNC School of Law, his BA from UNC-Charlotte with a major in History and a minor in International Studies, and a certificate in Spanish language from the Defense Language Institute. He is licensed to practice in North Carolina.
PERSONAL
Ashe is
• a native Charlottean,
• a fourth generation North Carolina lawyer,
• married to a girl from Myrtle Beach who teaches fourth grade in CMS,
• a car nut,
• and he claims to be a road cyclist and yogi, but we have seen no evidence of those claims.