John Ashton Snyder

Before becoming a lawyer, like my father and grandfather, I needed to go out on my own to see what I could do.  I quit my first college campus (WVU) in 1971 and started working a variety of jobs.  About 1975 I joined a carpenter's union, in Oklahoma City, and remained on a framing job I'd already taken.  I did that kind of work for about 7 years, then took an 11 month course in Industrial Maintenance, a fancy name for machine tools or machines that cut, turn, saw, drill and tap metal plates or bars.  After a few years of that work, factory, "machining" work - I got back into college to increase my financial prospects.

I began taking evening classes at Franklin Pierce College (now a University) in 1985, and finished in 1987, with a BS in Business.  I was accepted into law school the next year and started the evening program at New England School of Law in Boston.  I relocated to Atlanta in 1991 and, eventually, began courses at John Marshall Law School, graduating in 1997, passing the bar in 1998.