Kayla A. Cook

Kayla Cook is an experienced and versatile attorney who represents an extremely diverse clientele. Her multifaceted practice encompasses a wide variety of areas, including education, real estate, general business and corporate law, labor and employment and energy. Working from the firm’s Morgantown, West Virginia office, Kayla provides counsel to clients throughout the region and across the state.

The diversity of Kayla’s practice speaks to the energy, passion and experience she brings to the table for each of her clients. She’s also a proven team player. As a member of the firm’s distinguished Education Law Practice Group, Kayla supports a team that has provided legal services to institutions of higher education, each of West Virginia’s 55 county boards of education, private schools and the West Virginia Department of Education.

In her education law practice, Kayla regularly assists clients with a range of personnel and related human resources matters, including:

• Assigning, realigning and evaluating employees
• Title IX policy review and compliance
• Employee lawsuits and grievances
• Investigations
• Wrongful terminations

Additionally, Kayla has represented education clients in administrative proceedings, mediations/arbitrations and circuit court hearings. She also serves as the Title IX decision-maker/adjudicator for several of her clients. Much of Kayla’s education practice is mirrored in her labor and employment work, which includes workplace investigations involving harassment, sexual harassment and discrimination.

Kayla’s real estate practice largely focuses on residential sales and commercial leasing, but she has also represented several clients in matters related to municipal permits, takings and compliance issues. Her experience includes, but is not limited to:

• Residential and commercial transactions
• Title opinions and insurance
• Deed preparation and review
• Lease preparation and review
• Property disputes and evictions
• Homeowner’s Association (HOA) representation
• Mechanic’s Liens
• Condemnation and Eminent Domain
• Municipal permitting
• Billboard acquisitions and permitting

Kayla represents several large apartment and student housing complexes throughout the state and frequently advises them on issues associated with landlord tenant laws, the Fair Housing Act, lease compliance and evictions. She was also an instrumental figure in the formation and representation of an organization opposed to forced annexation in the City of Morgantown. Because of her efforts, legislative changes were made to the way in which a West Virginia municipality can annex property.

For her business and corporate practice, Kayla provides guidance and counsel to clients in matters related to company formation, business structuring and personnel matters. With a keen eye for detail, she excels at contract preparation, review and negotiation. This work dovetails nicely into her energy practice, which includes the examination and preparation of certified title opinions for oil and gas and coal companies.

Kayla proudly represented Bowles Rice as the Class of 2018 Pathfinder for the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) and actively works to promote and foster diversity as a member of the firm’s Recruiting Committee. In 2020, she was recognized as one of The State Journal's Generation Next: 40 Under 40.

• Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) Pathfinder, Class of 2018
• Member, Bowles Rice Recruiting Committee
• Leadership Monongalia, Class of 2017

• Summer Clerk, The Honorable Russell M. Clawges, Jr., Seventeenth Judicial Circuit (2011)

• Intern for the Victim/Witness Assistance Program for the Monongalia County Prosecuting Attorney (2007-2008)

• Recognized by The Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch (Education Law), 2023
• The State Journal's 2020 Generation Next: 40 Under 40
• West Virginia University College of Law, Order of Barristers
• West Virginia University College of Law, Associate Chief Justice of Appellate Advocacy, Moot Court Board

• National Association of College & University Attorneys (NACUA)
• National School Boards Association Council of School Attorneys 
• Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
• Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD)
• Young Professional Women in Energy (YPWE)
• Energy & Mineral Law Foundation (EMLF); Young Lawyers Committee
• Gas & Oil Association of WV, Inc.
• Metallurgical Coal Producers Association
• Monongalia County Bar Association

• United Way Emerging Leaders Advisory Committee
• United Way Campaign Coordinator
• WVU Medicine, Children's Gala Committee