Hon. Bonnie Clair

United States Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of Missouri

Judge Bonnie L. Clair sits on the bench of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Judge Clair previously spent many years in private practice representing creditors and debtors in bankruptcy, commercial, and consumer finance matters; she also spent time in-house at a large financial institution and served in the Attorney General’s Honors Program of the United States Department of Justice as an attorney with the Office of the United States Trustee.
Judge Clair currently serves on the Conference News and Elections Committees of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges. Before taking the bench, she served on the Region X Disciplinary Committee for the Missouri Bar, mediated and investigated proceedings for the Missouri Bar’s Fee Dispute Resolution Committee, and contributed to the American Bankruptcy Institute’s Seventh Circuit Volo updates. However, no one wants to talk about any of that once they find out that she was on Jeopardy! in 2006 and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in 2002.  
Judge Clair received her law degree from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, where she was an articles editor for the Journal of Urban and Contemporary Law (now the Journal of Law & Policy) and a national competitor in the New York City Bar Moot Court Competition. She received her undergraduate degree from Duke University, where she served on the editorial and business boards of The Chronicle, debated varsity and camped in “Tent 2” in the Krzyzewskiville line during the 1989-1990 basketball season.