Donna H. Lieberman has more than thirty-five (and counting) years of experience as a bankruptcy and insolvency attorney and a civil litigator. She began her legal career at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York (Civil Division) before changing her focus to bankruptcy and restructuring work, and still enjoys the mix of transactional work and litigation that the bankruptcy field presents. Ms. Lieberman has extensive experience representing troubled companies, unsecured creditors and contract parties, secured creditors, landlords, directors and officers, and asset purchasers, both in chapter 11 cases and in out-of-court proceedings. She has also represented the trustees of liquidation and litigation trusts that have emerged from confirmed chapter 11 plans, including trusts that have emerged from the bankruptcy cases of retailers, pharmaceutical companies and institutions addressing claims of sexual abuse. In addition, Ms. Lieberman has served as the litigation trustee of the Miami Metals Litigation Trust (formerly Republic Metals Refining Corporation), and has been counsel to both plaintiffs and defendants in bankruptcy-related litigations. Ms. Lieberman has represented clients in cases as varied as Brooks Fashions, Maidenform Worldwide, Orion Pictures, Marvel Entertainment, Lehman Brother, Tender Loving Care Health Care Services, Inc., Sears, SAS Airlines and Azul Airlines, as well as post-confirmation trustees in Rite Aid, Diocese of Rockville Centre, Tops Holdings, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, Endo Pharmaceuticals and Purdue Pharma.

By virtue of her experience in representing financially troubled companies, and individuals and entities dealing with troubled companies, Ms. Lieberman is able to effectively advise parties as to how to structure transactions with a view to protecting their interests and minimizing their risks in the event of a subsequent bankruptcy filing. Moreover, her work as counsel to trustees and her role as a trustee has provided her with considerable experience in evaluating causes of action and claims, and taking practical, common sense approaches to litigation. In recent years, her work with trusts has also given her an opportunity to create content for trust websites, a skill she could not have predicted developing when she began her legal career.

Ms. Lieberman moved from the United States Attorney’s Office to the Office of the United States Trustee, another branch of the Justice Department, and then into private practice, when she joined the bankruptcy group at the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher in 1989 and subsequently Battle Fowler LLP in 1997. She has been Of Counsel to Halperin Battaglia Benzija, LLP since the Fall of 2000, and strongly suspects that when she leaves that position, it will be to retire from the practice of law.

Ms. Lieberman is a graduate of Brandeis University, and received her law degree from New York Law School. She is a member of the New York State bar, and is admitted to practice before the District Courts of the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, including the Bankruptcy Courts within those jurisdictions. She is a member of the Bar Association of the City of New York and the American Bankruptcy Institute, and she is also the author of a supplement to the book “Structuring Commercial Real Estate Workouts: Alternatives to Foreclosure,” a publication of Prentice Hall Law & Business. Ms. Lieberman has been named to the Super Lawyers New York Metro list in debtor-creditor rights every year for the last 13 years.