Diane S. Rice joined the firm in 2026 from the San Francisco-based boutique Hosie Rice LLP. An exceptional trial lawyer, she brings 35+ years of complex litigation experience trying cases throughout the United States. Her practice focuses on difficult and high-profile lawsuits, including commercial disputes (breach of contract, trade secret, and misrepresentation), intellectual property, antitrust cases, products liability, mass torts, and class action suits. Her court experience includes over 100 weeks of jury trials in 15 states. She has settled thousands of cases.
Diane has broad experience representing plaintiffs and defendants, individuals, and Fortune 500 corporations, as well as startup/emerging tech companies, and mature companies. Her wide-ranging clients encompass technology companies, cryptocurrency entities, manufacturers, pharmaceutical, and medical device corporations. She has litigated cases against Google, eBay, Meta, Yahoo!, Amazon, Cisco, and Mastercard.
Diane started her career at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison (San Francisco), where she was a partner for over a decade and led the firm’s Products Liability & Life Sciences Group. Upon Brobeck’s dissolution, she joined Hosie Rice LLP.
Diane was a co-lead class action counsel in the In Re Literary Works in Electronic Databases Copyright Litigation, representing freelance authors who had their works published on Internet databases and publications without their permission. She has been a member of the national trial team for Baxter Healthcare Corporation and Mentor Corporation. She oversaw a pharmaceutical and device litigation for Novartis and Ciba-Geigy Corporations, and managed a national experts’ team for American Home Products. For 15 years, she represented Fibreboard Corporation, Owens Corning Fiberglas, and Pittsburgh Corning Corporation, and litigated on their behalf two of the largest class action trials in the country.
Diane has also litigated several significant pro bono cases. She represented a child who was severely brain damaged as a result of strangulation in a crib and received a $38 million structured settlement during trial. In another pro bono matter, she obtained a significant multimillion dollar cash settlement on behalf of a star athlete teenage boy who suffered permanent brain damage from a tennis racket blow to the head.
Diane has been a faculty member for trial advocacy programs at Stanford, Harvard, Notre Dame, and the University of San Francisco law schools, as well as a speaker for California Continuing Education of the Bar courses in trial skills, deposition skills, and trial advocacy. She serves as a visiting faculty member of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. She is often a featured speaker at industry conferences such as the Defense Research Institute Conference and Mealey’s.
Diane’s memberships include the Notre Dame Law School Advisory Council, the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch (San Francisco Committee), and the Belvedere Community Foundation. She is a former President of the Barristers Club of San Francisco and a White Scholar of the White Center for Law & Public Policy.