Frances Floriano Goins

Fran helps clients resolve complex business disputes through litigation and negotiation. She represents public and private companies and individual directors, officers, and shareholders in disputes on issues including securities, corporate governance, cybersecurity, consumer, and contract law. She regularly defends clients in SEC and other regulatory enforcement actions. Fran has conducted many internal corporate and special litigation investigations, and litigated numerous takeover and proxy contests involving public companies.

Additionally, Fran counsels businesses on compliance and training for governance, data privacy and cybersecurity, ethics, and anti-bribery best practices.

Fran is an accomplished appellate lawyer, successfully arguing appeals on many groundbreaking issues. She also serves as an arbitrator on the American Arbitration Association Commercial and Consumer Panels and has represented numerous clients in arbitration proceedings.

Well-respected by in-house counsel and peer attorneys, Fran is consistently ranked as one of Chambers USA’s “Leaders in Their Field” in Ohio for General Commercial Litigation and a “Litigation Star” in Ohio by Benchmark Litigation. She has appeared in Benchmark’s “Top 250 Women in Litigation” in the U.S. since 2014. Fran is nationally recognized by The Best Lawyers in America® in Corporate Compliance Law, Corporate Governance Law, Securities Litigation, and Banking & Finance Litigation, and was named Best Lawyers 2022 “Lawyer of the Year” for Corporate Compliance Law, in 2018 for Banking and Finance Law, and in 2017 for Securities Litigation.

Since 2019, Fran has served on the faculty of the Ohio Supreme Court Judicial College, instructing judges on topics including securities and shareholder litigation, “business divorce” actions for private companies, and fiduciary duties of managers, members, controlling shareholders, and partners in various types of business entities. She was also tapped by the Department of Homeland Security to speak on “Cybersecurity in the C-Suite and Boardroom” in its C-Cubed webinar series.

Fran is active in the ABA, having previously chaired the Business Law Section Director & Officer Liability Committee. She was appointed by the President of the ABA to the Standing Committee on Election Law Advisory Board in 2020, and is a past chair of the Standing Committee’s Programming Subcommittee. She is active in the community, including serving as a director of Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood, Ohio, participating as a long-time member of the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center Sing Out! Chorale, and serving as chair of the Art Song Festival at the Cleveland Institute of Music.