CLARA DUFFIELD
Senior Counsel

Clara Duffield is Senior Counsel at CROKE FAIRCHILD DUARTE & BERES. She supports financial services, technology, insurance, healthcare, and other business clients in transactional, regulatory, and data-focused matters. She counsels organizations from early-stage startups to Fortune 100 companies on commercial contracting, AI compliance, privacy and cybersecurity, corporate structuring, M&A, and complex technology and data-licensing arrangements. Clara’s approach emphasizes practical, business-oriented guidance aligned with each client’s operational and strategic goals.

Clara regularly represents hedge funds, financial institutions, tech companies and startups in the complex legal issues faced by businesses of all sizes. Her general experience includes corporate structuring, AI and cryptocurrency, privacy, cybersecurity, intellectual property, real estate and technology. She also has deep experience in more industry-specific legal needs, such as exchange relationships, quantitative research, white labeling, alpha capture, electronic trading, IP licensing and management, and data licensing, purchases and sales.

Clara enjoys diving into to complicated legal frameworks and figuring out how they apply to her clients. Whether it is compliance frameworks tailored to international and U.S. privacy laws, or developing third party relationship management procedures, she takes a practical approach to mitigating client risk.

Prior to joining CFDB, Clara spent more than a decade in private practice concentrating on complex regulatory, financial services, insurance, commercial real estate, mergers and acquisitions, and branding transactions. She also served as in-house counsel for a large financial services company, where she managed intellectual property portfolios, vendor and technology agreements, privacy and cybersecurity issues, and compliance initiatives. This dual background provides her with a unique perspective on the legal, technical, and organizational challenges faced by sophisticated businesses.

Clara received her J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School and her B.A. from American University.