Patricia A. Conners

Patricia “Trish” Conners is a nationally-renowned litigator and creative legal strategist, with particular expertise in antitrust and competition law. For 36 years she 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 to be Chair of the Multistate Antitrust Task Force of the National Association of Attorneys General, serving in that capacity until 2005.

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.

Through her time with the Attorney General’s Office, Trish gained extensive knowledge of state and federal agency antitrust and consumer protection enforcement practices and policy decisions as well as many other aspects of government and regulatory practice. The insights culled from this knowledge 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 strategy and creative case resolution. Her antitrust work includes many successful enforcement actions involving such diverse products as areas as pharmaceuticals, financial services, banking, health care products and services, telecommunications, dairy and other food products, and a wide variety of consumer products. Her work 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. Trish is Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Antitrust and Trade Regulation.*

^{*With less than 7% of eligible members certified in Antitrust and Trade Regulation, board certification is The Florida Bar’s highest level of evaluation of a lawyer’s competence and experience in a particular area of practice. It identifies lawyers with "special knowledge, skills and proficiency, as well as a reputation for professionalism and ethics." To achieve certification, a lawyer must endure rigorous examination and testing and be evaluated by their peers.}