Patricia Conners

Practice Areas

Patricia “Trish” Conners is a nationally-renowned litigator and creative legal strategist, with particular expertise in antitrust and competition law. Trish’s practice includes advising clients, both plaintiffs and defendants, regarding antitrust, competition, and consumer protection enforcement issues, investigations, or litigation, both in single-state and multistate matters; providing cutting-edge and timely compliance counseling and training to clients to minimize potential antitrust or consumer protection exposure; and providing clients with strategic counsel regarding investigative, litigation and settlement strategies as well as creative options for effective case resolution. A particular focus of her work is enforcement by state attorneys general. Trish is Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Antitrust and Trade Regulation.

Career

For 36 years Trish served seven attorneys general in various senior executive positions in the Florida Attorney General’s Office, including as Chief Deputy. As Chief Deputy, she supervised over 1,100 employees and engaged in a wide array of matters, representing the State of Florida on both sides of the “v”. As Deputy Attorney General for Enforcement she oversaw the Office’s Antitrust and Complex Enforcement, Civil Rights, Consumer Protection, False Claims and Lemon Law Arbitration Divisions. For the last two decades of her extensive career in public service, Trish was also the Director of the Antitrust and Complex Enforcement in addition to her other responsibilities. In 2001, she was the first woman to be appointed Chair of the Multistate Antitrust Task Force of the National Association of Attorneys General, serving in that capacity until 2005.

Through her time with the Attorney General’s Office, Trish gained extensive knowledge of state and federal antitrust and consumer protection enforcement practices and policies as well as many other aspects of government and regulatory practice. These insights as well as her extensive substantive enforcement experience are a valuable resource to companies confronting potential multistate or multi-agency exposure as well as to state attorneys general and private plaintiffs contemplating antitrust actions.

Trish has been credited with helping obtain billions of dollars in recoveries on behalf of the State of Florida and its citizens. She has led or co-led countless notable multistate and state-federal investigative and litigation efforts, concentrating on both litigation and settlement strategies and creative case resolution. Her antitrust work includes many successful enforcement actions involving such diverse products as pharmaceuticals, financial services, health care products and services, telecommunications, dairy and other food products, and a wide variety of consumer products. Her work in public service led Trish to regularly interact with opposing counsel, private plaintiffs’ counsel, other state attorneys general offices as well as counterparts at the Federal Trade Commission, U.S. Department of Justice and sometimes even European agencies.

Professional Memberships

American Bar Association, Government and Public Sector Lawyers’ Division, Executive Council, 2020-Present;

Ronald McDonald House Charities of Tallahassee, Inc. Board of Directors, 2023;

Bond Elementary School, Classroom Connection Mentor, 2022-Present;

University of Florida, Adjunct Professor, Antitrust Law, Spring 2023 and Spring 2024;

American Bar Association (ABA), Antitrust Law Section, (various leadership roles) 2001-Present;

ABA Antitrust Law Section, Compliance and Ethics Committee Co-Chair, 2023-Present;

ABA State Antitrust Practice and Statutes (6th Edition) Treatise, Editorial Board, 2021-Present;

ABA Leadership Development Committee, Co-Chair, 2019-2023;

Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund Advisory Council, Vice Chair, 2023-Present;

ABA, Life Fellow;

American Antitrust Institute, Advisory Board, 2002-Present;

Florida Association of Women Lawyers (FAWL), 1985-Present;

Tallahassee Women Lawyers (TWL), 1985-Present