LexisNexis Practice Guide: New Appleman Pennsylvania Insurance Law

Tracy Olsen has been a lawyer since 1990. Ms. Olsen is corporate counsel for National Storage Affiliates in Denver, where she manages litigation and advises on regulatory processes. Ms. Olsen has dedicated the majority of her career working in and representing the insurance industry. She spent 10 years as a trial lawyer with a boutique insurance defense firm in Chicago. She was frequently retained for litigating coverage matters as well as complex liability and medical issues on behalf of insurers and policyholders. Ms. Olsen has a wide range of claims and legal expertise in personal lines, D&O, E&O, public entity, employment practices and school board liability matters. She held legal and operational roles at a Fortune 100 property and casualty insurer, a specialty lines insurer, a logistics start-up company, and a small specialty lines insurance brokerage. In addition, she has led multiple major initiatives and projects involving quality assurance, litigation management, IT controls, insurance regulatory compliance, and internal process improvement.

Throughout her career, Ms. Olsen has contributed to a variety of legal and insurance organizations, including the Chicago Bar Association, where she was co-chair of the Young Lawyers Section Trial Techniques Committee, Defense Research Institute (DRI), Property and Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCIAA), Property and Liability Research Bureau (PLRB), Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), and the Association of Insurance Compliance Professionals (AICP). Ms. Olsen is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (B.A., Political Science, 1987) and Santa Clara University School of Law (J.D., 1990), where she served on the Santa Clara Law Review Editorial Board as a Comments Editor and was published as a student author.

Professor Christopher C. French currently teaches Torts, Trial Advocacy, Evidence, Contracts, and Insurance Law at Penn State University's School of Law. He has written and published extensively in the area where insurance law intersects with contract and tort law. He is a co-author of an insurance law casebook, Insurance Law and Practice: Cases, Materials, and Exercises, as well as an insurance law reference book, Insurance Law in a Nutshell. He also wrote numerous chapters of a two-volume insurance law treatise entitled Policyholder's Guide to the Law of Insurance Coverage. His scholarly work has been published in law review journals at, among other law schools, Duke Law School, Georgia State University, University of Kansas, University of Nevada, University of Southern California, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas, Villanova University, and University of Virginia.

He received his law degree from Harvard Law School and his bachelor degree from Columbia University. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State Law, he taught at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Villanova Law School. He also formerly was a partner at K&L Gates LLP where, as a commercial litigator, he handled all aspects of litigation matters for Fortune 500 companies and other businesses in federal and state courts across the United States, trying cases in seven different states. In addition to his advocacy work, he also has served as an expert witness and as both a party-appointed and a neutral arbitrator.