Recent News

June 22, 2006

New lawyer spotlight: Katheryn Lloyd

~ written by Biru Chen, Columbus Bar Communications Intern

Katheryn Lloyd almost didn’t study law. After graduating from OSU in 1999, this current attorney at Carpenter & Lipps had originally planned to work on her family’s horse ranch and concentrate on riding. It was only because a knee injury slowed her down that she looked into the LSATs.

“I just showed up and took [the exam] on a whim, and then the whole process just took over from there,” Lloyd said.

Her love of horses began at a young age. Lloyd grew up on a horse farm in Granville, helping her mother in the horse business by working around the barn and giving riding lessons. She participated in the Canadian Equestrian Team during spring of 1994, and then on the OSU Equestrian Team throughout her undergraduate years.

By fall of 1999, Lloyd was enrolled in Duke University School of Law. She never gave up her interest in horses, and even today, she still enjoys spending time caring for and riding horses. “I try to go back most weekends and help out around the farm; it is a nice break from my office routine,” she said.

Before attending law school, Lloyd worked as receptionist at the Columbus Bar for a year. During her first year at Duke, she auditioned and was accepted on the moot court team as the only first-year student. That team was the first from the United States to compete in the Roussou Moot Court International Competition, where everything from the briefs to the oral argument is in French.

“The competition that year was actually held at Frankfurt and Holmberg, Germany,” she said. “Our team got to fly to Germany for a week and meet all these French-speaking teams from all over the world.”

Lloyd competed in the Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition in San Francisco and another national competition in Richmond, Virginia during her remaining years at Duke. Apart from these commitments, she also worked as a summer associate at Carpenter & Lipps after her first year, and spent her second summer traveling to Washington and Brussels for a program with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

“I had two terrific summer experiences, so by my third year of law school, I had some really big decisions to make regarding where I would want to work,” Lloyd said.

But by the time she graduated from Duke, Lloyd had decided to practice law back in Ohio; this choice was heavily influenced by her wonderful memories in Columbus.

“My experience at Carpenter & Lipps during my first summer after law school was so challenging, so engaging and ultimately so rewarding,” she said. “That made my decision to come back really easy because I knew I was coming back to such a rich experience at my firm.”

Another factor in her decision were the events on 9/11 which occurred during her last year of law school. “9/11 also made the decision to come back to my community at home easier because I wanted to focus on family more, go back to work on the horse farm and just do things that I had historically done growing up,” Lloyd said.

She has been working full time at her current firm since fall of 2002 and said she loves where she is now. “I feel that I had great mentoring [during my year working] at the Columbus Bar, and that has continued at my current firm,” Lloyd said. “The partners here really have the desire to help new, young attorneys succeed, and it has been a great educational experience.”