Angela Dentice to Head State Attorneys Group

Italian Community Center member and personal injury attorney M. Angela Dentice has taken office as the first woman president of the Wisconsin Academy of Trial Lawyers (WATL). She was installed at the organizations annual installation dinner held this year at the ICC on Friday, Dec. 1.

Dentice has been a member of WATL since graduating cum laude from Marquette University Law School in 1985. She had held every other officer post in the organization, including serving the last year as president-elect. She has also co-chaired WATL program and legislative committees, and was the Wisconsin chapter’s delegate to the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. She will serve a one-year term as president.

Dentice described being WATLs’ first woman president as an honor, and said that she hopes more female attorneys will become trial lawyers. I think that juries are very receptive to women trial lawyers, she said.

The WATLs’ six-part mission statement includes the following: Secure and protect the rights of those injured in their persons or civil rights. The state organization which Dentice heads has more than 1,000 members.

A Milwaukee native who was born in the old Third Ward in the area of Van Buren and Michigan Streets, Dentice received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Marquette in 1970. In 1971 she began teaching handicapped students in Mequon. Later, she joined Milwaukee Public Schools as coordinator of diagnostic teams and supervisor of teachers of the handicapped. In 1974 she received a master’s degree in education of the handicapped from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she was later appointed to teach the subject as an adjunct professor.

After graduating from law school, she joined the Hausmann-McNally law firm. Later, she was with the Cannon & Dunphy law firm. Earlier this year, she entered solo practice in Wauwatosa. Her entire legal career has been as a trial lawyer representing clients who have suffered a personal injury. She works primarily in the areas of injury accidents and product liability. One of her most notable cases resulted in an award of $4.2 million to a boy she represented who was injured as the result of medical negligence.

Dentice is the daughter of the late Joseph E. Dentice and Frances (Alioto) Dentice, both of whom were first generation Italian Americans. All four of Angela’s grandparents emigrated to this country from Sicily.

Dentice is married to Benn DiPasquale, who is a partner at Foley & Lardner, Wisconsin’s largest law firm. Her son, Sam Bottoni, is a freshman at DePaul University in Chicago.

Dentice has been a member and officer of the Wisconsin Chapter of the Justinian Society of Lawyers, an organization of attorneys and jurists of Italian descent, that is affiliated with the National Italian American.