Courtroom and Homeroom Are Equal in Rye Shys Book

Dinner with friends. A long work week that creeps into Saturday. Board meetings. Maybe even a bowl game or a beach trip with the girls. Repeat. The life of a young professional.

Family law attorney April Rye Shy knows that life just about as well as anyone because she lived it for seven years. A rising attorney bent on building her career, she emerged from the Carroll County prosecutor’s office in 1995 to establish a solo practice in Fayetteville.

Rye Shy entrenched herself as a courtroom attorney with an expertise in child welfare. With an appetite for the excitement of juvenile court and the ability to handle its heartbreak and drama, Rye Shy worked Family in Need of Services cases in Washington County.

“There’s big action every day, whereas in other kinds of law, cases can linger for years,” she said of her practice.

She became so good at running her own shop she was recognized by the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal in 2000 as a member of Forty Under 40. That same year, she met Craig Shy, and that’s when the big transition began.

Two years later, the couple were wed, and as he already had two daughters, then aged 2 and 5, Rye Shy found herself in a four-member household.

“I went from living alone to living with three other people,” she said. “That was a huge change.”

Four years after they married, the couple had children together, fraternal twins, swelling the household to six.

“We knew we wanted a child, but we were blessed with two,” she said.

Rye Shy, 45, embraced motherhood, cycling out of her board memberships and into family oriented roles like homeroom mom, youth church choir, and the countless errands a mother must run.

“My day used to end at 5 [p.m.]; now it begins at 5,” she said.

Meanwhile, she never slacked off the pace at her law office. But doing it all — billing, filing, collections, cases and personnel — as a solo practitioner got to be too much.

“I was working a whole lot,” she said. “I couldn’t do it anymore.”

She started looking for something else, and didn’t have to look too hard. Dating back to her days as a deputy prosecutor in Carroll County, she knew the lawyers at Taylor Law Partners.

She joined the firm in 2008. At Taylor, she found the support network she needed to not just fulfill her ambitions as an attorney, but to fulfill those as a mother of four as well. She also brought 15 years of experience to the table, and is a state certified ad litem for both domestic relations and dependency-neglect cases.

“It was beneficial for all of us,” she said of her move to Taylor.

Founded in 1986, the firm provides representation in Social Security disability, personal injury, family, criminal defense, probate and business litigation.

As Rye Shy approaches 25 years in the field, she shows no signs of slowing down. She still goes to court twice a week, has as many as 300 cases at any given time, and plans on going back to boards at some point in the future.

“I enjoy working,” she said.

Her role is to protect the best interests of minors, whatever those interests might be, from infants up to 17-year-olds. She is on the front lines in gut-wrenching cases of divorce, foster care, neglect and abuse. Sometimes cases end on a happy note, and sometimes they don’t.

“A child’s future can be forever changed by a single hearing,” she said. “While that’s a daunting thought, it is exactly that degree of magnitude that keeps me motivated to ensure a positive outcome.”

When she was in school, she made her best grades in property law, and thought that’s the path her career would take. But when she graduated and needed a job, she was hired in 1993 as a deputy prosecutor working cases in circuit court, where the stakes are at their highest.

From then on she was hooked on the courtroom.

Despite the sweeping changes of the last 15 years, Rye Shy has held onto her circle of friends. And they still manage to get together every once in a while. Lunch, maybe dinner and a glass of wine at Bordino’s. Even concerts at the Walmart AMP.

And while it’s good, times have changed too much for it to ever be like it was in 1995.

“I’m lucky that I’ve been able to sustain friendships, but we socialize in different ways,” she said.