Meet Crystal
Crystal Abbey is an attorney in the Bankruptcy & Financial Restructuring practice. Her focus is on helping lenders, debtors, buyers, and other creditors navigate insolvency and financial distress. This includes pre-bankruptcy advising and workouts, bankruptcy, and state court receivership proceedings. She also represents Fee Examiners and Fee Committees in large Chapter 11 bankruptcies, qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing fee applications and negotiating and litigating fee application disputes.
Crystal’s previous experience includes mergers and acquisitions, commercial contracting, and general corporate matters in a variety of industries; commercial real estate purchases and sales and commercial leases for office, retail, and industrial properties; and commercial litigation, insurance defense, and criminal defense.
Crystal is also an active pro bono lawyer having successfully negotiated two settlements on Section 1983 prisoner rights cases. She also frequently volunteers at the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinic, serves as a mentor for the Eastern District of Wisconsin Bar Association Hon. Charles N. Clevert Jr. Mentoring Program, dedicates time to Marquette Law School’s moot court competition as a brief and oral argument judge, and judges high school mock trial competitions. Crystal also coaches St. Norbert College’s Mock Trial team.
While in law school, Crystal co-taught legal writing to first-year law students as a Dean’s Fellow and served on the executive board for the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law. She also interned at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Vermont. Following law school, Crystal clerked for the Honorable Michael E. Keasler at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Before joining Godfrey & Kahn, Crystal was a litigator at a Fox Valley law firm.
Education
Juris Doctor, Vermont Law School, magna cum laude, 2015
Master of Arts, Early Modern and Modern European History, Eastern Illinois University, 2012
Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, Southern Illinois University, 2010
Honors
Recognized by Super Lawyers as a Wisconsin Rising Star (2019 - present)
Recognized by Best Lawyers “Ones to Watch” (Corporate Law, 2021 - present)
Admitted To Practice
Illinois, Vermont, Washington D.C., WisconsinCourt Admissions
United States District Court, District of Columbia
United States District Court, District of Nebraska
United States District Court, District of Vermont
United States District Court, Eastern District of Arkansas
United States District Court, Eastern District of Wisconsin
United States District Court, Southern District of Texas
United States District Court, Western District of Arkansas
United States District Court, Western District of Wisconsin
Professional Associations
Association for Women Lawyers, Brown County Bar Association, Brown County Young Lawyers Association, Eastern District of Wisconsin Bar Association, Pro Bono Committee, Fox Valley Young Lawyers Association, Honorable Robert J. Parins Legal Society of Northeast Wisconsin, Outagamie County Bar Association, Western District of Wisconsin Bar Association