Prior to joining Willkie in 2022, Hon. Shelley C. Chapman (RET.) served as U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of New York since 2010. A widely-recognized leader of the bankruptcy bar, Judge Chapman oversaw the Lehman Brothers Holdings bankruptcy case—the largest bankruptcy case in history—and many other chapter 11 mega-cases and chapter 15 cross-border proceedings, including Boston Generating, Innkeepers, Ambac, LightSquared, Sbarro, NII Holdings, Sabine Oil & Gas, Nine West, Century 21, Aeromexico, and Philippine Airlines. She has also acted as a court-appointed mediator in numerous complex chapter 11 cases, including Windstream, Frontier Communications, OneWeb, Avianca S.A., Purdue Pharma, and Sears, and is currently serving as the lead mediator in the PROMESA/ Title III case of The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA)/The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Committed to furthering excellence in the wider bankruptcy community, she has mentored newly appointed bankruptcy judges and has hosted hundreds of school-age children in her courtroom for mock trials.
Before beginning her service on the bench, Judge Chapman was a partner at Willkie from 2001 – 2010, where her practice included the representation of debtors, creditors, and other parties in interest in major chapter 11 cases and out-of-court restructurings.
Judge Chapman received a B.A. with distinction in all subjects from Cornell University in 1978 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, from which she graduated cum laude in 1981. She served as an editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.