Nancy Ingram Jordan of the lawyering Ingram family in Cobb County has joined divorce and family law firm Kessler & Solomiany as an appellate expert from another family law firm, Warner Bates.

Jordan, who is of counsel at Kessler & Solomiany, spent 15 years as a felony prosecutor in the Cobb County district attorney's office, where she became an appellate specialist for criminal cases, before entering private practice.

Appellate specialists in family law are relatively rare, in part because the standards for domestic appeals differ from those governing criminal appeals. It's more difficult to find a legal error to form the basis of a divorce or custody appeal, appellate guru J. Scott Key told the Daily Report in 2014 when Jordan started her appellate family law practice at Warner Bates. Domestic cases are usually bench trials, where judges have more discretion and domestic litigants generally don't have the same right to appeal as criminal defendants, Key said.

That doesn't mean there is no need for family law firms to have appellate expertise. "If you're going to have a firm with 10 or more lawyers, you need to have somebody who's good at appeals," Kessler & Solomiany's co-founder Randy Kessler said in the same article.

With Jordan's addition, Kessler & Solomiany has 14 lawyers.

In her 30 years as an appellate advocate, Jordan has authored or co-authored over 500 appellate briefs and appeared in over 80 oral arguments before courts of appeal, according to Kessler & Solomiany. Her name appears in at least 332 reported decisions by the Georgia Supreme Court and the Georgia Court of Appeals, including several cases of first impression.

Jordan comes from a family of lawyers. Former Georgia Supreme Court Justice G. Conley Ingram, who died in November, was her father, and her sister is Cobb County Superior Court Judge S. Lark Ingram.

Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart has hired Lisa Ellis-James as its chief operating officer from the Boston Consulting Group, where she was senior director for global operational innovations and the chief of staff for BCG's global operations leadership team.

Ellis-James heads business operations for the national labor and employment firm, which is headquartered in Atlanta. That includes finance, information technology, human resources, knowledge management, data analytics, litigation support and real estate.

Ogletree has made Ellis-James a member of its executive committee and she leads its management committee, made up of the firm's office managing shareholders.

"As the legal market continues to evolve, it is critical for our firm to have a strategic focus and approach," said Ogletree's managing shareholder Matt Keen in an announcement. "Lisa's vision and years of strategic leadership experience at a global consulting firm will benefit our firm as we head into 2020 and beyond."

She holds an MBA from Emory University and a BA in communications and Latin American studies from Southern Methodist University.

Womble Bond Dickinson has added veteran patent attorney Chris Kent as of counsel from national intellectual property firm Lee & Hayes. Kent has spent almost 20 years in private practice managing U.S. and international patent portfolios and patent prosecutions. Before that, he was a primary examiner at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for nine years.

"Patent prosecution and portfolio management is one of our strongest practices, particularly here in Atlanta, as we help clients protect and monetize their innovations," said Womble's Atlanta managing partner, Joel Pieper, in an announcement. Kent brings a "wealth of patent experience," Pieper said, to a team of more than 150 IP lawyers and patent agents in the U.S. and U.K. Womble's lawyers file about 2,000 U.S. and international patents per year, according to the firm.

Christopher Caiaccio has joined Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton as counsel in the labor and employment practice from Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart. Caiaccio advises employers on all aspects of employment law, including discrimination, sexual harassment and wage and hour issues. He also advises clients on labor relations, such as union avoidance, unfair labor practice charges and other matters involving the National Labor Relations Board.

Adam Gaslowitz of Gaslowitz Frankel, a fiduciary litigation boutique, has joined the roster of neutrals at Henning Mediation and Arbitration Services. Gaslowitz, who's been in practice for 35 years, handles disputes over wills, trusts and guardianships as well as shareholder and partnership disputes for individuals, executors, trustees, shareholders and financial institutions. He is a longtime advocate of mediation instead of litigation to resolve disputes, and he's mediated hundreds of cases as a neutral over the past 15 years.

MendenFreiman has added two associates. Samantha Page joined from Merritt Watson and is handling estate planning, trust and estate administration, tax planning and business law. Casey Tuchscher, a 2019 graduate of Georgia State University College of Law, joined the tax controversy and tax planning practice. She clerked for Moore Ingram Johnson & Steele while in law school and was a student attorney in GSU Law's tax clinic for low-income clients.

Shook Hardy & Bacon has elected Leonard Searcy to its executive committee, effective Jan. 1. Searcy, who has a patent law practice, is one of the initial members of Shook's new Atlanta office, which it launched in June. He divides his time between the firm's Atlanta office and its Kansas City, Missouri, headquarters.

Jonathan Tuggle, a founding shareholder of family law firm Boyd Collar Nolen Tuggle & Roddenbery, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. Candidates must undergo a rigorous selection process to be chosen as one of the group's 1,600 fellows nationally.

Gov. Brian Kemp has appointed Sally Lynn Nabors, the payroll manager for Alston & Bird, to the Georgia Board of Education.