Reynolds on North Carolina Family Law

Suzanne Reynolds is Dean Emerita and Professor of Law at Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Having taught family law for most of her thirty-eight years of teaching, she has engaged thousands of students in the policies behind the law governing the family, and hundreds of those former students now practice family law all over the country. In addition to teaching family law, she has helped shaped family law in North Carolina through her influential 5th edition of LEE’S NORTH CAROLINA FAMILY LAW. With the 6th edition, the title reflects that the treatise is now officially her own. Dean Reynolds has also helped shaped family law in North Carolina through her work in the General Assembly. She worked on the drafting committees that rewrote the law of adoption, alimony, and equitable distribution. She has consulted with legislative committees on custody and on domestic violence, and she has participated in programs for judges and other officers of the judicial system. In 1995, she co-founded the Domestic Violence Advocacy Center of Forsyth County, a partnership of the law school, the Forsyth County Bar, and the Legal Aid office of northwest North Carolina. For this work, the Forsyth County Bar won the ABA’s Harrison Tweed Award for a bar association’s legal services to the poor. She has served as a commissioner on the Uniform Laws Conference since 2010 and was the reporter for a uniform law recognizing the domestic violence protective orders from other countries. She has also served on the task force for the Public Trust and Confidence Committee of the Chief Justice’s Commission on the Administration of Law and Justice. For this and other work, she has received the Gwyneth B. Davis Award for Public Service from the NC Association of Women Attorneys, the Governor’s Distinguished Woman of Education Award, the H. Brent McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award from the NC Bar Association, and the NC Lawyers Hall of Fame Award from NC Lawyers Weekly. From 2014-2019, she served as Dean of Wake Forest law school, returning to the faculty in 2019.