Special Education Attorney • Parent Advocate Educator • Former School Board Member
Nicole W. Hull, Esq.
For more than 15 years, Nicole W. Hull has worked at the intersection of education, law, child advocacy, public policy, and dispute resolution.
Today, as founder and managing attorney of The Hull Firm, LLC, Nicole represents parents and students navigating special education disputes and serious school discipline matters.
But her work advocating for children and families began long before she became known as The Cool Kids’ Advocate.
This Work Has Always Been About Kids.
Nicole’s professional journey has taken her inside many of the systems that shape a child’s educational experience.
She has conducted research on the school-to-prison pipeline and parent rights. She has worked inside Georgia’s juvenile courts. She has helped shape dispute-resolution policy at the state level. She has facilitated difficult IEP meetings. She has mediated special education disputes. She has taught future lawyers how to resolve conflict. And for six years, she served her community as an elected school board member.
Those experiences now inform the way she represents families.
Nicole doesn’t approach a special education case by looking at one meeting, one IEP, or one incident in isolation. She understands how education, disability, behavior, discipline, policy, and law intersect—and how decisions made inside a school can have consequences far beyond the classroom.
From School Board Member to Parent-Side Attorney
That experience gave her a firsthand understanding of how school systems operate—from policy and administration to the realities of implementing educational programs for students.
Her work in special education dispute resolution provided another perspective.
For approximately eight years, Nicole served families and school districts through the Georgia Department of Education’s special education dispute-resolution process, including service as an IEP Facilitator and Special Education Mediator.
Today, she no longer serves as a special education mediator. Instead, she uses that experience to represent parents during mediation, facilitated meetings, due process proceedings, and other special education disputes.
She knows the process from multiple sides of the table—and now her seat is beside the parent.
A Career Built Around Conflict Resolution
Nicole’s experience in dispute resolution extends well beyond special education.
She was appointed to the Georgia Supreme Court Commission on Dispute Resolution, serving from 2019–2025. From 2022–2025, she also served as Co-Chair of the Commission’s Training & Credentials Committee, helping oversee standards related to mediator training and credentialing in Georgia.
Nicole also served on the Commission’s Juvenile Subcommittee, where she participated in the development of Georgia’s Juvenile Delinquency Mediation and Juvenile Dependency Mediation categories, including the training guidelines and standards used to prepare mediators for this specialized work.
Her work in juvenile dispute resolution extended beyond policy development. Nicole helped develop and deliver juvenile mediation training and has trained attorneys, judges, mediators, and other professionals in juvenile mediation and conflict resolution across the country.
Her training experience has included juvenile delinquency, juvenile dependency, communication with youth, mediation ethics, family dynamics, and the unique considerations involved when children and families enter the legal system.
That work is part of a much broader career devoted to understanding conflict—not simply litigating it. Nicole has trained professionals in mediation and conflict resolution and taught subjects ranging from general civil mediation and negotiation to juvenile and special education dispute resolution.
Today, Nicole brings that experience into the classroom as Course Coordinator for Introduction to Dispute Resolution at Mercer University School of Law, helping prepare third-year law students to understand negotiation, mediation, advocacy, and effective dispute resolution.
For the families she represents, that experience matters.
Not every disagreement requires the same strategy. Effective advocacy means knowing when to collaborate, when to negotiate, when to document, when to escalate—and when litigation is necessary.
Nicole has spent her career studying, teaching, designing, and practicing dispute resolution. Today, she uses that experience to help parents determine not simply whether to fight, but how, when, and where to advocate most effectively for their child.
Understanding the Systems That Affect Children
Nicole’s commitment to children and education began early in her legal career.
She completed judicial clerkship experiences with both the Athens-Clarke County Juvenile Court and the Chatham County Juvenile Court, gaining exposure to the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.
She also conducted research through the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, examining issues including juvenile justice reform, zero-tolerance school policies, child welfare proceedings, the school-to-prison pipeline, and parent rights.
Her early scholarship included work examining the relationship between the school-to-prison pipeline and students with learning disabilities—an issue that remains deeply connected to her current representation of students with disabilities facing school discipline.
That combination of education and juvenile-system experience is particularly important when a child’s disability-related needs and school discipline collide.
” And Then, I Became the Parent at the Table.”
Professional experience taught Nicole how systems work.
Motherhood taught her what those systems feel like to families.
As the mother of children with their own educational needs, Nicole has also experienced special education from the parent’s chair.
She knows what it feels like to walk into a meeting carrying records, questions, concerns, and the responsibility of making decisions that may affect your child’s future.
She knows how quickly parents can become overwhelmed by acronyms, evaluations, eligibility rules, data, behavior plans, procedural requirements, and competing recommendations.
And she knows that behind every file is a child who is much more than a diagnosis, disability, behavior, test score, or IEP.
That’s why we call them Cool Kids.
Why “The Cool Kids’ Advocate”?
Because children deserve to be seen for who they are—not reduced to the thing that brought adults to the meeting table.
The child struggling to read.
The child whose behavior is communicating an unmet need.
The child with autism who needs different support.
The teenager facing expulsion.
The student whose anxiety, ADHD, dyslexia, communication needs, or disability isn’t being adequately addressed at school.
They’re not cases.
They’re Cool Kids.
And their parents deserve the information, strategy, and support necessary to advocate effectively for them.
More Than Representation
Nicole believes families should not have to wait until their child’s situation becomes a legal crisis before they can understand special education.
That belief led to the creation of the Cool Kids Parent Collective—an educational and advocacy resource designed to give parents access to practical special education training, courses, downloadable tools, resources, and a private parent community.
The goal is simple:
Help parents become informed before the meeting, organized before the problem, and prepared before the crisis.
Because sometimes a family needs an attorney.
Sometimes they need a strategy.
And sometimes they simply need someone to teach them how the system works.
Education & Professional Background
Licensed Attorney
Georgia
Tennessee
Education
Juris Doctor — Walter F. George School of Law, Mercer University
B.A., Criminal Justice, cum laude — Mercer University
B.A., Sociology, cum laude — Mercer University
Selected Professional Experience & Appointments
Former District 8 Member — Clarke County Board of Education
Former IEP Facilitator — Georgia Department of Education
Former Special Education Mediator — Georgia Department of Education
Former Member — Georgia Supreme Court Commission on Dispute Resolution
Former Co-Chair — Commission on Dispute Resolution Training & Credentials Committee
Course Coordinator, Introduction to Dispute Resolution — Mercer University School of Law
Former Judicial Clerk — Athens-Clarke County Juvenile Court
Former Judicial Clerk — Chatham County Juvenile Court
Former Research Fellow — Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia
Member — Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA)