Emily is a creative and zealous advocate for families and children in both Ohio and Kentucky. She takes great pride in helping clients navigate the difficult process of divorce. She has extensive experience representing clients ranging from the single parent to professional athletes, handling complicated issues involving subject matter jurisdiction, high net worth marital estates, convoluted marital/non-marital tracing issues, and a litany of other complex divorce and family law matters.

Emily has over 20 years of experience working in the legal field. Prior to starting her own law firm, she was an attorney at Rittgers, Rittgers, & Nakajima. Emily spent five years as a family law attorney at Graydon Law, and five years with Mark A. Ogle Family Law Practice. She also spent two years at the Children's Law Center, Inc. (CLC) where she focused on high-conflict child custody cases, education law, and criminal sexual and physical abuse cases involving child victims. While at CLC, she also prepared appellate briefs for various family law attorneys on a contract basis. Every brief returned a decision in favor of the client. She now serves on the Children Law Center board of directors.

Emily considers herself to be a lifetime child advocate. She spent over four years at the Women's Crisis Center, volunteering countless hours offering support, encouragement, and advocacy to survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and/or human trafficking. She has volunteered for Legal Aid Society of Southwest Ohio as a Guardian ad Litem in dependency, neglect, and abuse cases. In 2017, Emily was appointed by Governor Bevin to serve as the Child Advocate representative on the Kentucky Child Support Guidelines Review Commission, an appointment and position she held for over five years.

As the mother of a child with special needs, Emily prides herself in handling complex custody matters involving special needs children, as well as serving as a consultant in collaborative divorce cases where the minor child has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Emily is also very passionate about special education law as well as Medicaid reform so that Medicaid Waivers are made more accessible to special needs children and their families. She has helped guide many clients and families throughout the (unfortunately) very difficult process of obtaining the appropriate services and accommodations children are entitled to receive under the law.

Emily lives in Northern Kentucky with her husband and their five children. In her spare time, she enjoys meeting other family lawyers for a quick glass of wine after work, having “me time” at the salon or spa, reading case law like the big nerd that she is, going on date nights with the love of her life, Jason, and having family fun days with all of her "kiddos."

- Emily’s family is portrayed in the movie “We are Marshall” - her uncle (and Marshall football coach) Red Dawson was played by actor Matthew Fox. Her Aunt Carol Dawson, a debutant in real life, never worked as a waitress in a cafe, despite what the movie portrayed.

- Emily has, however, worked as a waitress …as well as a nanny, lifeguard, gift wrapper, marketing coordinator, product manager, paralegal, and recruitment consultant in London, UK under an employer-sponsored work visa after college. Prior to moving back to the States to start law school, she briefly lived in Johannesburg, South Africa.

- Emily recently discovered that she is a (very distant) descendant of Abraham Lincoln and Marylin Monroe.

FAVORITE QUOTE: “God is not about making our lives mess-free, He is about turning our messes into something beautiful.”