Jennifer Lyday

Honoree Image

Jennifer Lyday

Waldrep Wall Babcock & Bailey PLLC , Winston-Salem, NC

“[Jennifer] demonstrates a maturity and deep understanding of the law, and her experience in day-to-day law office practice … and courtroom advocacy arm her with the essential skills for being a successful and respected bankruptcy practitioner.”

JENNIFER is a partner at Waldrep Wall Babcock & Bailey PLLC and the firm’s human resources partner. She has represented secured creditors, distressed businesses, unsecured creditors’ committees, and trustees in business bankruptcy cases. She has also represented buyers and sellers of assets in bankruptcy, and has counseled clients in complex civil litigation. Prior to joining the firm, she was a partner at Waldrep LLP and an associate at Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, LLP, where she focused on corporate chapter 11 representations and related state court debtor and creditor representations.

Jennifer is currently on the panel of subchapter V chapter 11 trustees for the Middle District of North Carolina. She serves as secretary of the Bankruptcy Section Council for the North Carolina Bar Association and has previously chaired its Communications Committee, which is responsible for a blog for all North Carolina bankruptcy lawyers. She has presented at several CLE programs sponsored by the Federal Bar Association and the North Carolina Bar Association, and she has presented multiple times at the Middle District Bankruptcy Seminar in the Middle District of North Carolina. She is a member of the North Carolina State Bar, the North Carolina Bar Association, the Turnaround Management Association, ABI (for which she serves as a Fourth Circuit Volo author), and the International Women’s Insolvency & Reorganization Confederation Carolinas Network, for which she serves as Communications Chair. In addition, she has been recognized for six years as a North Carolina Super Lawyers Rising Star in Business Bankruptcy and is ranked in Chambers USA in Bankruptcy/Restructuring in North Carolina in Band 3.

Jennifer has significant pro bono experience, particularly in helping domestic violence victims obtain 50-B protection orders while working with Legal Aid of North Carolina. She also regularly represents parents of children abducted and taken into the U.S. in Hague Convention cases, her work on which won her the North Carolina Bar Association Young Lawyer Pro Bono Award in 2013. In those cases, she represents foreign parents whose spouses have abducted children and brought them to the U.S. She still takes such cases, which often require her to speak Spanish to her pro bono clients. She also helped a victim of religious persecution in Burma obtain asylum in the U.S. In addition, since 2016, she has served on the board of directors for The Children’s Law Center of Central North Carolina in several capacities including chair, which provides a voice for vulnerable children in high-conflict custody and domestic violence cases by volunteering to be appointed guardian ad litem in such cases. In her free time, she is an active member of the parish council of her church and an avid reader and hiker.

Education

  • J.D., William & Mary School of Law
  • B.A., Political Science and Spanish, Wake Forest University