Trisha M. Rich, Esq.
Trisha Rich is an attorney in the Holland & Knight's Chicago and New York offices, the national co-chair of the firm's Legal Profession Team and a member of the Litigation and Dispute Resolution practice. Ms. Rich also serves as the Deputy Professional Responsibility Partner for Holland & Knight's Chicago office. Her practice focuses on legal ethics and professional responsibility matters and complex commercial litigation.
Ms. Rich is a national leader in the legal ethics community. She founded and coordinates the Attorney Defense Initiative, the nation's first privately sponsored pro bono initiative that focuses on assisting impaired lawyers facing disciplinary charges. Ms. Rich serves on the board of directors of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers as the organization's secretary, and is a frequent speaker and author on a variety of issues related to ethics and risk management. She is currently an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, where she teaches legal ethics and professional responsibility. She previously taught legal ethics at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Ms. Rich is also a member of the Ethics Commission of Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, which adjudicates ethics complaints involving the agency’s governmental officers and employees.
In her professional responsibility practice, Ms. Rich advises lawyers, law firms, legal tech companies, and in-house counsel on a variety of issues related to professional responsibility and legal ethics, along with risk management, including legal malpractice, partnership and corporate structuring, regulation, law firm management and employment issues, fee disputes, conflicts and disqualification issues, confidentiality, privilege, attorney disciplinary defense, character and fitness proceedings, and all areas of legal ethics. Ms. Rich also advises both law firms and lawyers on ethical and fiduciary issues related to lateral hiring, law firm dissolution and expulsion matters. She also serves as an expert witness on legal ethics and professional responsibility matters, including partnership and fee disputes.
In her commercial litigation practice, Ms. Rich represents a wide variety of clients in litigation and other disputes, including national and international companies, small businesses, municipalities and state agencies, and individuals. She has extensive experience in resolving disputes between businesses and represents clients at the trial and appellate levels in a wide variety of matters, including actions for breach of contract, tort claims, breach of warranty, fraud, consumer fraud, deceptive trade practices, tortious interference and all aspects of real estate, property management and receivership litigation. Ms. Rich also has broad experience representing financial institutions in all types of litigation, including consumer financial litigation. Ms. Rich also has experience serving as an arbitrator.
Ms. Rich has first- and second-chaired many trials and evidentiary hearings in both state and federal courts, and has represented clients in administrative hearings. She is a member of the Trial Bar for the Northern District of Illinois, has argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and is a 2012 graduate of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy's national trial practice program.
Prior to practicing law, Ms. Rich taught practical and theoretical ethics at two universities.