Compensation Committee, Member

Women's Initiative Steering Committee, Member

• Kentucky, 1998

• Law clerk to the Hon. Pierce Lively, United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, from 1994 to 1995

• Vanderbilt University Law School, J.D., 1994
• • Order of the Coif
  • Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law
  • • Executive Editorial Board
  • King & Spalding Moot Court Competition
  • • Best Oralist
  • American Jurisprudence Award
  • • Contracts I, Bankruptcy
• Transylvania University, B.A., 1991, summa cum laude
• • Thomas D. Clark Award
  • W.T. Young Scholarship
  • Holleian Society
  • Omicron Delta Kappa
  • Phi Alpha Theta

Claria joined the Lexington office of Frost Brown Todd LLC in February 2006. Before joining the Firm, she practiced at Strother & Shadwick, representing many of the state’s banks and lending institutions in real estate and lending transactions. She also served as the first executive director of the Kentucky Equine Education Project (KEEP), a grassroots educational group whose mission is to promote and protect Kentucky’s horse industry.  Her experience includes representing clients in real estate and commercial lending transactions, loan workouts, public finance, bond transactions and equine transactions.

Claria began her legal career at King & Spalding in Atlanta, Georgia, representing clients such as 3M and General Motors in product liability cases. She returned to Kentucky in 1998 as an Assistant United States Attorney, prosecuting a wide variety of financial crimes, including bank fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and tax fraud.

Experience

Advise financial institutions on issues related to real estate, commercial lending, banking regulations, workouts and documentation.

Advise purchasers on real estate matters in $90 million acquisition of coal terminals and coal mines in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia.

Assist client in drafting and negotiating easement agreement with over 100 landowners (and prosecuting related condemnation cases) in connection with the replacement of an underground crude oil pipeline.

Serve as bond counsel on numerous tax free and bank qualified bond transactions.

Served as Executive Director of the Kentucky Equine Education Project, helped recruit over 6,000 members and raised approximately $4 million to promote and protect the industry, testified extensively before a number of state legislative committees, and lobbied and ultimately passed a $15 million breeder incentive fund in the state legislature.

Past

• Transylvania University, Board of Trustees

"Wiretap and Electronic Surveillance Act of 1994"
H.B. 2153, S.B. 2708, enacted into Tennessee law, April 21, 1994

Co-Author: "Appealing Punitive Damage Awards: Getting the Most Mileage Out of BMW v Gore and Other Recent Developments in the Law"
ABA Products Liability Publication, November 1997

Co-Author: "The Turncoat Employee: The Problem of Locking the Barn Door"
Chemical Manufacturer's Association Annual Meeting, July 1996