Cherie E. Cookorinis
Attorney
Cherie Elizabeth Cookorinis is a Greek-American, multi-lingual immigration attorney with nearly fifteen years of expertise practicing exclusively in the field of immigration law. As the founder of the firm, Cherie is dedicated to the concept of providing customized immigration solutions for you, your employees, your business, and your family, and prides herself on producing results-oriented, professional work to achieve clients’ U.S. immigration goals: employment, study, permanent residency, citizenship, or merely visiting and enjoying the United States. Because of her background as a first generation U.S. born child of immigrants, Cherie fully understands how important the decision to immigrate to the USA is and what impact it has on is on a person’s family and career.
Cherie studied at Emory University in Atlanta on a full-tuition scholarship and graduated with a B.A in Russian and Spanish, receiving many academic awards and recognitions during her four years there and serving for two years as president of the Russian Club. She then studied law and received her Juris Doctorate from the Georgia State University College of Law in 1996, graduating with honors. Her first job in immigration law as a law student was as an intern with Catholic Social Services Immigration Clinic in Atlanta in 1995, where she litigated a successful asylum claim for a Guatemalan immigrant before the immigration court in Atlanta. Since then, Cherie has worked in a variety of small and large private firms with a focus in employment and family-based immigration. She clerked and then was associate attorney to John William Brent, who had a thirty-year career as an immigration lawyer and was the first president of the Atlanta chapter of the American Immigration Lawyer’s Association. Cherie then worked for a large international employment firm, Paul Hastings, as a contract lawyer in the firm’s immigration department under top immigration lawyers such as Daryl Buffenstein, Crystal Williams, and Bruce Larson. There she also learned how to prepare a lean and mean labor certification application without fear, thanks to the tutelage of Deborah Marlowe, an unsung hero of the employment based immigration trenches. Cherie then took the best of her mentors’ guidance and opened her own firm in 1999. Since then, she’s been too busy to make a big deal out of writing scholarly articles or public speaking, but she is a longstanding member of the American Immigration Lawyer’s Association and loves her clients and her work!
Cherie regularly represents clients all over the world in immigration matters, through visa petitions and consular processing. She has a deep appreciation and love for many cultures and speaks Spanish, English, and Greek fluently. Cherie also understands and reads or speaks French, Portuguese, and Russian at varying levels. Her law practice is divided equally between employment-based (work visa and green card) and family immigration matters. A dogged and determined lawyer, Cherie evaluates cases thoroughly and honestly on their facts and on the law and strives to give clients as many options and as much information as possible to let them make the correct decision about their situation. Cherie welcomes a challenge and is known by other lawyers as someone who solves problems because she thinks out of the box. She is not a lawyer who takes only softball cases and passes on the tough stuff.
When she is not working on client matters, Cherie volunteers in her spare time with the North Atlanta Rotary Club and is dedicated to upholding the Rotary motto of Service Above Self. Cherie enjoys spending time with her two girls and also loves reading, scuba diving, and cooking foods with an international flair.
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Catherine Wightman
Paralegal
Catherine Wightman serves a as paralegal at the Law Office of Cherie E. Cookorinis, P.C. With more than five years of experience, she has a solid background in employment-based and family-based immigration cases. Ms. Wightman joined our firm in 2007. She assists the firm with the preparation of business and professional visas (H-1B, L-1, TN, E, and J-1), labor certifications, consular processing and immigrant visas. She earned her master’s degree in law from the University of San Buenaventura in Cali, Colombia in 2002, earning the Academic Excellence award. Ms. Wightman is fluent in both English and Spanish.
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