Ashe Lockhart has joined Hull & Chandler as a Partner...
Hull & Chandler is pleased to announce that Ashe Lockhart has joined the firm as a partner practicing primarily in information technology & cyber law and also in general corporate & business law. Within the niche of tech & cyber, Ashe has a broad background in commercial technology transactions, organizational tech strategy and policy, data privacy, and information security. He served at Compass Group USA as Assistant General Counsel in charge of tech & privacy for the North American market. During the 20 years prior to joining Compass Group, he practiced in law firms ranging from large AmLaw 100 firms to solo practice, always with a focus on tech & cyber. Immediately following law school, he was a law clerk to Burley Mitchell, Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.
In Ashe’s own words:
I worked at the National Security Agency when I was an electronic warfare intelligence operator in the Army in the 1980s, so I was aware of the Internet back then. I became interested in tech & cyber law when I was a first year law student in Chapel Hill in 1994, when I frittered away much of my study time by exploring the Internet with Usenet and Telnet tools like FTP, Archie, Veronica, Jughead, and Gopher. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was intrigued by tapping into information stores across the Internet, which at the time was used mostly by research academics and the US Department of Defense. The DOD can be credited with “inventing” the Internet through the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which created ARPANET, which gave rise to the Internet as we now know it (no, it wasn’t Al Gore, and he never said he did).
When I found the crude Mosaic web browser, I thought I had stumbled into a front row-seat at a private screening of the future of humankind, which immediately seemed vastly more interesting and amazing than anything I could have possibly imagined. By the end of my first semester of law school, Netscape released the first version of Netscape Navigator, and I was deep into the phenomenon I was experiencing.
Carolina Law had the foresight to initiate its first “Cyberspace Law” class during my third and final year to study how the current state of the law in the real world could apply to the intangible, ethereal, and dynamic environment of the web and the Internet – or cyberspace. As the Cyberspace Law course went on, I committed myself to breaking into this emerging legal practice area that still doesn’t have a universally agreed upon name 25 years later. My own lexicon for my law practice has included dot-com law, cyberspace law, computer law, and internet law – among others. I now refer to my primary practice area as (1) information technology, which deals with commercial activity, transactions, organizational strategy and policy, government regulation, and pretty much any issue involving computers and the Internet, and (2) cyber law, which deals with data privacy and information security.
Aside from my work as an attorney, I was a banker for 5 years after a disheartening year of selling life insurance right out of college. During my years in private practice, I served as interim executive director of a business non-profit, where I led the restructuring and rebranding of the organization. Between Compass Group and Hull & Chandler, I helped my brother-in-law set up a gourmet, farm to table food delivery business known as Your Farms Your Table. I was YFYT’s first general manager and helped expand the business into virtual and in-person catering. But the law is a jealous mistress, and I am back in the salt mines on bended knee at the altar of the billable hour.
For more information or to contact Ashe, see his bio here and his LinkedIn profile here.