Patricia Wilson
Attorney

     Patricia Wilson is a principal in the law firm of Hadfield & Wilson in San Francisco, concentrating in professional liability and commercial litigation. Ms. Wilson created and conducts Quality Assurance Audits for law firms of all sizes, reviewing over 30 different practices and procedures which can lead to malpractice claims. She conducts continuing legal education for those firms emphasizing the particular needs of the firm as revealed by the Audits. She also consults with law firms on leadership, management and business development issues. Ms. Wilson served for five years as a member of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Lawyers' Professional Liability. Prior to that, she participated with that Committee in collecting data from 29,000 legal malpractice claims for the Committee's National Data Center and served as a member of the Data Subcommittee which analyzed that data and edited it for publication in the final report entitled "Profile of Legal Malpractice: A Statistical Study of Determinative Characteristics of Claims Asserted Against Attorneys".

     She was a member of the State Bar of California Advisory Committee to Continuing Education of the Bar from 1991-1994. Since 1994, she has been a member of the Quality Improvement Task Force of the ABA Law Practice Management Section. Ms. Wilson authored the chapter on Conflicts of Interest in the book entitled "Preventing Malpractice, The Insider's Guide", published in 1992 by The Rutter Group and presented a series of six lectures throughout California for them on conflicts, docket control and records management. She has also lectured throughout the country on malpractice prevention, including to the Texas Association of Defense Counsel, PEN-CLE Productions, and the University of San Francisco School of Law Continuing Education program. She has also written, "The Underwriting Audit: A Backstage Look at the Way Lawyers Really Manage Their Practices", published in the Professional Liability Underwriting Society Newsletter, December, 1993, and "Law Firm Risk Management Reviews: Damned If You Do; Damned If You Don't" a paper presented to the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Lawyers' Professional Liability Fall Program, October, 1994. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Ms. Wilson worked for 12 years as a legal secretary, paralegal and law office manager, which gives her an appreciation for the important roles of staff in practice management and risk management programs.