Lee Byrd serves as chair of the firm's Business & Professional Litigation Team, where he devotes substantial time to handling a wide variety of business-related litigation, including commercial lease, insurance, franchise, and employment disputes, breach of warranty and U.C.C. claims, and breach of contract cases. In 2008, he was elected to serve on the three-member Board of Directors, the firm's management team.

Lee's cases often involve assertions of officer and director liability, breach of fiduciary duty, unfair competition, fraud and business conspiracy. Lee is also frequently involved in litigation involving disputed estates, wills and trusts. Lee is particularly proud of his work defending Virginia attorneys against claims for professional malpractice.

Examples of Lee's work include:

• Lee obtained a substantial judgment (including a recovery of attorneys' fees) against a travel agency that had refused to pay the balance due under an agreement to purchase the assets of a competing agency.
• Lee obtained a substantial judgment on behalf of a milk cooperative against a milk producer that had knowingly delivered milk containing excessive antibiotics to the local dairy. 
• Lee successfully defended at trial a former tenant of a shopping center in a suit brought by the landlord to reinstate a lease, thereby saving the client over a million dollars in rent and other charges over the alleged remaining term of the lease. 

In addition to serving as the Business and Professional Litigation Practice Group's chair since 2001, Lee serves as chair of the firm's Associates and Counsel Committee.  Lee is a principal contact at the firm for The Law Firm Alliance and, in 2007, was elected to serve on its Executive Committee.  

In addition to his Business & Professional Litigation Team duties, Lee is an active, adjunct member of the firm's Local Government Practice Group.  In that capacity, Lee has handled a variety of complex matters, including claims involving environmental and securities issues.

Lee has been listed five times among Virginia's "Legal Elite" in Virginia Business Magazine's annual compilation, most recently in the December 2007 issue for his Civil Litigation practice. Lee also is listed in the 2006 and 2007 Virginia Super Lawyers as a Business Litigator. Lee is a proud native of Onancock, located on Virginia's Eastern Shore.