Kendrick received a B.A. in classics and English as a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her master's and doctorate in English literature at the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. In law school she served as essays development editor for the Virginia Law Review and received numerous awards, including the Margaret G. Hyde Award, the Hardy Cross Dillard Scholarship, the Law School Alumni Association Best Note Award, the Brown Award for Excellence in Legal Writing, the Food & Drug Law Institute H. Thomas Austern Short Paper Award, and the Virginia State Bar Family Law Book Award. Before joining the faculty, Kendrick clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Hackett Souter.