Donna L. Wilson

Donna L. Wilson joined Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP in 2013 and has risen to be its CEO and managing partner in addition to her posts as leader of its digital and technology practice and co-leader of its privacy and data security practice.

She's proud of having brought to bear her unique perspective as one of the few female chiefs of an Am Law 200 firm who also publicly identifies as LGBTQIA+ as she seeks to invent what she calls the professional services firm of the future.

Wilson said she channels a long-ago mentor for whom she clerked in the 1990s: the late David R. Thompson, a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "Judge Thompson was a practicing lawyer and a law firm founder before he went on the bench. With him it was people first, and he never took himself too seriously. He took a big picture approach like what we do here at Manatt."

Key to the firm's transformation, she added, has been Manatt's expansion into new geographies and its move away from traditional practice groups toward an industry-focused hybridized approach that brings together legal and expert consulting talent.

"We went into Covid with a tight firm culture and we're coming out even better," Wilson said. "We missed each other, but we survived and thrived." She added that she and her colleagues were "electric with excitement" as they planned for an in-person, all-professionals firm get-together in Palm Springs in May.

"I'm frantically training on my pickleball skills for our tournament--I've been throwing shade on my associates and now I'm going to have to back it up," she laughed. "Everybody wants to beat the CEO."

On the job, Wilson works to mitigate for clients the reputational risks associated with high-profile litigation and government enforcement actions. Her clients--about whom she says little--include financial services and health care organizations.

For some, she serves as general privacy counsel. For one client she furnished advice and guidance through multiple bet-the-company privacy incidents that required her team of lawyers, consultants and technologists to conduct internal investigations while overseeing forensic investigations by third-party vendors.

Wilson engaged with state and federal regulators and law enforcement officials to notify affected customers, work through complicated business partner relationships and obligations and mitigate litigation risks. Her team also advised the client on insurance recovery options in relation to the incidents.

In a current class action following a data breach, Wilson served as a senior advisor as Manatt defeated the plaintiffs' novel claims that the client's HIPAA policy established a contract between customers and the business. The court granted 90% of Manatt's motion to dismiss. Doe et al. v. Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago et al., 2020CH04123 (Cook Co. Ill. Cir. Ct., filed May 8, 2020).

"It's about giving the business legal and strategic advice and assessing the impact on people and the company," she said.

- John Roemer