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Ashley Kissinger, a partner in the firm, concentrates her practice primarily in libel, invasion of privacy and related First Amendment litigation and counseling. Ms. Kissinger has practiced in federal and state courts nationwide at both the trial and all appellate levels, representing both parties and amici curiae.

In addition to defamation and related tort litigation, she has represented clients in First Amendment matters in a variety of other contexts, including challenging prior restraints, resisting subpoenas issued to the press, seeking access to public proceedings and records, and defending a book publisher against a claim that it aided and abetted murder. In Rossignol v. Voorhaar, Ms. Kissinger successfully represented a newspaper publisher in a civil rights action against a county, its sheriff, and numerous sheriff’s deputies, securing a landmark ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that the defendants’ off-duty mass purchase of newspapers on the eve of an election to suppress its contents and retaliate against the publisher violated the publisher’s First Amendment rights.

In recent years, Ms. Kissinger has been actively involved in efforts by both nongovernmental organizations and the State Department to support the development of a free and independent media in the Persian Gulf.  She has taught international free expression law to journalists and editors in the region, spoken at regional conferences about the law of free expression in the United States, and advised stakeholders concerning draft amendments to two Persian Gulf countries’ press laws.

Resident in Colorado, Ms. Kissinger is an active member of the Boulder County Bar Association Bar-Media Committee and was recently nominated to be a Co-Chair of the Women in Communications Law Committee of the ABA Forum on Communications Law for the 2008-2010 term.  She worked in the D.C. office of the firm for 8 years and during that time served as an adjunct professor at Trinity University in Washington, D.C., teaching Mass Communication Law to undergraduates. She also coordinated the firm’s partnership with H.D. Cooke Elementary School, a project of the Washington Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, through which attorneys and staff at the firm have tutored and mentored students and participated in other projects designed to assist the school community.

Ms. Kissinger is a graduate of Stanford University (A.B. 1990) and received her law degree from The University of Texas School of Law (J.D. 1995, with honors), where she was an Associate Editor of the Texas Law Review, nominated by the faculty to the Legal Research Board, and recipient of the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Labor Law Note, Civil Rights and Professional Wrongs, A Female Lawyer’s Dilemma, 73 Texas Law Review 1419 (1995). Following law school, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Sam Sparks of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. Prior to joining the firm in 1999, Ms. Kissinger was an associate in the Austin, Texas office of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP. She is admitted to practice in the state courts of Colorado, California, Texas and the District of Columbia, as well as in the United States Supreme Court, the United States Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Fourth and Fifth Circuits, and in the United States District Courts for the District of Columbia, the District of Maryland, and the Northern and Western Districts of Texas.