Sophia Tao
Associate Attorney
Sophia joined The Hassell Law Group in 2023 while awaiting her Bar results. She was admitted to practice law in California in December of 2023. Sophia is now an Associate Attorney with our firm.
Sophia brings a wealth of knowledge to the team. Before joining our firm, Sophia previously worked as a Paralegal at a well-known San Francisco personal injury law firm where her duties included filing pleadings, trial management motions, and organizing discovery responses for personal injury cases. She also served as a Judicial Extern for The California Court of Appeal, First District during law school where she researched legal issues on appeal and prepared draft legal memoranda.
Sophia has gained further hands-on personal injury law experience since joining our team. She works directly with the Senior Attorneys at our firm. She has assisted our legal team with drafting pleadings, letters of representation, settlement demand letters, lien reduction letters, and with legal research. She has reviewed, evaluated, and summarized case evidence, and assisted in preparing compelling evidentiary presentations. She has drafted discovery responses, and worked closely with and guided clients in responding to discovery and gathering information and documents supporting their claims. She has exceptional legal research skills and adeptly researches issues arising in our cases. Sophia also confers with defense counsel, claims adjusters, expert witnesses, and medical providers.
Sophia obtained her law degree (J.D.) in 2023 from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where she was an accomplished student. During law school, she was honored with a CALI Award for Legal Research and Writing, and a CALI Award for Scientist to Lawyer Coursework. She also held editorial positions on The Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly.
Sophia further developed her legal skills as a Clinical Law Student at the UCSF/UCSF Law Consortium’s Medical-Legal Partnership for Seniors Clinic which partners with UCSF and the Veterans Administration Medical Center to provide wrap-around legal services to older adult patients. There, she:
- Managed multiple client cases from start to finish, including writing letters of representation, conducting client interviews and meetings, spotting issues and needs, and writing closing letters.
- Drafted advance health care directives, durable powers of attorney for finances, and Wills.
Before attending UC Law San Francisco (formerly known as UC Hastings College of Law), Sophia worked as a Research Manager for the Director of the Center for Innovation. There, she:
- Conducted legal research on pharmaceutical market structures, including writing a grant proposal, reviewed contracts with public and private data vendors, submitted an IRB application, and assisted with obtaining grant funding and with publishing findings in reputable academic journals.
- Managed data acquisitions and ensured compliance with proprietary information for research projects.
- Summarized key findings in memos to public officials to inform policymaking on the affordability and access of pharmaceutical drugs.
- Designed a publicly available database including over 160,000 FDA patent data points to inform policymakers on pharmaceutical patent laws.
Sophia is very committed to seeking justice for those injured in accidents and to ensuring they are fairly compensated for their losses. Sophia earned her bachelor’s degree (B.S.) in Pharmacology, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Sophia is fluent in English and speaks conversational Mandarin Chinese.