Deborah Ebel | Atlanta Divorce & Family Lawyer | Georgia

Debby has 38 years of experience in sophisticated civil litigation, the most recent 23 years of which have been exclusively in the practice of family law. Having already worked as a lawyer in the public sector for 10 years, and before deciding on family law as the area that enabled her to make the biggest impact on people, in 1985 she was recruited by the then head of the Litigation Department at Long & Aldridge, LLP. She became the 35th lawyer in the firm and the first female litigator. That firm is now known as McKenna, Long & Aldridge, LLP. At McKenna, as it grew from 35 to 500 lawyers around the world, Debby practiced in the area of complex business litigation, i.e., breach of contracts or tortious interference with business relations among corporate entities; shareholder derivative actions; First Amendment litigation; construction litigation; and condemnation actions. Prior to that, from 1975, right out of law school, to 1985, Debby practiced with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. While at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, Debby practiced in a wide variety of substantive areas, including bankruptcy, employment law, fair housing and landlord/tenant law, fighting for consumer rights, statutory and constitutional challenges in several class action cases, in both federal and state trial and appellate courts, all the way to the United States Supreme Court, in areas involving immigration, education, juvenile law and all manner of issues concerning children.

Having practiced in just about every area of the law (except criminal law), for people covering the entire economic and social spectrum, from billionaires to homeless people, Debby realized, in 1990, that family law more than any other area of the law, required, and incorporated, all of the special skills she has gained over time: her Master's Degree in Social Work taught her interpersonal and family dynamics, understanding behavioral and psychological conditions and the treatment thereof; her experience at Legal Aid not only gave her insights into hardship on all levels, not just economic, and good coping mechanisms, but also taught her the detailed facets of civil procedure in State and Federal Courts on the trial and appellate court levels as well as the art of brief writing, argument, negotiating, and motions practice; and her 27 years of experience in a global law firm, working with Fortune 100 and 500 Companies and their personnel, provided her familiarity with the world of finance, investment tools and strategies, and accounting principles.

It was natural, therefore, for Debby to harness her expertise, training, education, talents and interests in people and problem-solving, into the practice of family law starting in 1990. Since then, Debby has limited her practice to all aspects of family law, including divorce, custody, child support, alimony, custody modification, child support and alimony modifications, prenuptials, post-nuptials, legitimation, paternity, family violence, child sexual abuse and torts, domestic adoption, and Guardian ad Litem work, which often involves her performing as a quasi-mediator. She handles divorces either through traditional litigation in Court, including mediation and late case evaluation, or using the more economic and children oriented collaborative law model.

After 27 years in the global law firm now known as McKenna Long & Aldridge, LLC, and after 22 years of building a sophisticated, successful and well respected family law practice within that firm, in 2012, Debby decided that McKenna's environment, due to its ever increasing size and focus on global and domestic corporate, corporate governance issues, government relations, government contracts, commercial lending and bankruptcy, etc. was no longer the environment in which she could best represent her family law clients. She is happy with what she does and where she does it; and a happy person makes for a dedicated, zealous, highly respected advocate. "Winning" a case for a client might not be everything, but it is darn close to it!