Alison Cox
Special Counsel, Bowles Rice LLP
Written by Ava Kaiser
Photo by Jenny Lynn Photography.
For Alison Cox, special counsel for Bowles Rice LLP, serving her community was instilled in her from an early age. Raised in Martinsburg, WV, by two loving and supportive parents, Cox often joined them in volunteer work.
“ My parents taught me the importance of public service by modeling it for me,” Cox says.“ They took me along when they served, and I learned by watching them.”
Cox spent most of her childhood in a dance studio on Martin Street, where her passion for dance became the first step in her career.
“ The dance studio was my refuge, a place for creative expression and striving toward perfection,” she says.“ I still miss the comfort, the challenges and the feeling of being in a ballet class.”
After attaining her Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance with a classical concentration from Radford University, Cox relocated to dance professionally with Dance Theatre of Florida. As much as she loved dancing, Cox was eager to apply to law school at the end of her first season with the dance company.
Returning to the Mountain State, Cox attended the West Virginia University( WVU) College of Law. Her background in performing arts made law school particularly challenging at first. Admittedly, it took her a while to find her footing in thinking more analytically, but once she did, Cox enjoyed the discussions that arose when analyzing a case and learning new concepts.
During winter break of her second year in law school, Cox became engaged. She decided she wanted to graduate
early, and two weeks after her December 1998 graduation, she married her husband and now colleague, Chris Cox, a retired U. S. Army veteran and now also special counsel for Bowles Rice.
Cox describes her husband as a real-life Ted Lasso and credits him as her greatest influence and partner.
“ Chris makes every situation turn into a positive experience with true compassion, honesty and leadership,” says Cox.“ I am lucky to have him as a colleague as well. I couldn’ t imagine doing life with anyone else.”
Cox and her husband eventually moved to Colorado Springs, where he was stationed as an Army officer. From there, she started her first legal job at Shepards, acquired by LexisNexis, where she worked as a legal editor.
After three years in Colorado Springs, her husband was ready for law school, and the couple moved back to Morgantown so he could attend WVU College of Law. Cox got a job as a staff attorney at West Virginia Senior Legal Aid, where she advocated for and provided legal information to West Virginia’ s senior population. The role influenced her need to practice in an area where she could work and help people directly.
“ It was the first legal position where I worked one-onone with clients, and it gave me my first taste of estate planning,” she says.
For Cox, the biggest challenge to her legal career was deciding to take a 12-year hiatus from the practice of law.
“ In my husband’ s third year of law school, we found out we were expecting our first child and that he was getting stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina,” she says.“ I decided to leave the practice of law and stay at home to provide stability to my growing family.”
The war in Iraq brought imminent deployments for her husband, leading the family from Fort Bragg, after two deployments, to Charlottesville, VA, in 2007. They welcomed their second child shortly after moving.
In 2016, after her husband retired from his Army career while stationed in Vicenza, Italy, the family moved to Charles Town, WV. Cox was eager to return to a town only 16 miles away from where she and her husband grew up.
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