The Case for a Career on the Plaintiffs’ Side

Episode transcript:

Note: This transcript is generated from a recorded conversation and may contain errors or omissions. It has been edited for clarity but may not fully capture the original intent or context. For accurate interpretation, please refer to the original audio. 

JOHN QUINN: This is John Quinn and this is of course Law disrupted. Today we’re speaking to a new author, a former adversary of mine, a lawyer by the name of, I know him as Bill Reed. I’m learning now his full name is William T. Reid IV and William T. Reid IV has written a book called Fighting Bullies: The Case for a Career in Plaintiff’s Law, and, Bill your book just reads instinct with passion and commitment. There’s no question that you believe what you have written. And you just told me, I asked you before we started whether I can get this book on Amazon yet, and you said no. There’s a publication date coming up. Will be available on Amazon and Audible. Alright, so first just to introduce you, tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your practice. 

BILL REID: I have a small plaintiff’s trial boutique based in Austin, Texas called Reid Collins and Tsai and I kind of feel like my story is, I got lucky. I didn’t really learn a whole lot in law school about how to think about my career.

I don’t think much has changed. I don’t think law school’s really well prepared to teach young lawyers about how to think about their career. They get swept up in OCI and the, you know, attraction of big salaries. Not really much more. And so I feel like I owe it back to our profession to try and do something to give back to the profession I love because so many lawyers other than you and I go down the path of a legal career only to become disenchanted, don’t enjoy what they do, some burn out, some quit.

And I think it’s really kind of the exception to the general rule. I view myself as a minority lawyer because I love what I do, but I don’t think many lawyers love what they do. 

JOHN QUINN: So if you could summarize the thesis of your book in a few sentences, what would you say? 

BILL REID: I would say that you can choose your career path, not have it chosen for you.

My book is a roadmap about how to think about doing that, and I think that if you really think about it in a meritorious case, not an unmeritorious case, I think most young lawyers would prefer to represent the plaintiff in the subject matter that interests them most. And my book, ought to, or at least hopefully, will inspire some of them to go and do that.

JOHN QUINN: Now, your book is a kind of a full-throated, advocacy piece for plaintiff’s practice. That’s a fair statement. So why did you write this book?

BILL REID: So I teach at Texas Law School and I have a, the second to last class is kind of entitled advice I wish someone gave me, you know? And I think that, again, I don’t mean to bash law school too much, but I don’t think law school is designed to be a trade school, right?

Law school is a very theoretical exercise in learning just pure doctrinal law and I think you might appreciate my view, which is that that’s a wide difference from the real life practice of law. Law professors really are ill-equipped to explain to students what real life is about. And then you add that to, I mean, I don’t know if you know this, but OCI is now in January of a law student’s first year, for your second summer clerkship.

JOHN QUINN: That’s pretty amazing. January your first year. You are making decisions about where you’re gonna practice the summer of your second year. 

BILL REID: Correct, which you and I both know largely is the place most lawyers start, right, in their career. And so if you begin to think about like, what does a law student really know?

When I went to law school OCI was really the fall, like the beginning of your 2L year started maybe before school commenced, but went well into like October of your 2L year. For the 2L summer, and at the time, I mean, I think that this could be geographic, but at the time, you could split your summers, which is becoming a more and more rare phenomenon.

Now law firms are requiring exclusivity and they’re starting OCI, earlier and earlier, so Stanford, Harvard, Yale, all in January. Georgetown’s in February. I’m speaking at Texas Thursday. I guess I’ll figure out when their dates are, but it’s moving earlier in the process. And, as you see, one of the theses of my book is, is that I think the big law kind of pyramid, which, when I say pyramid, I mean more lawyers at the base, fewer lawyers at the top; I think that pyramid could soon turn into a different shape like a wine bottle. Or maybe even a diamond, where there aren’t as many young lawyers needed to run the practice of what today is big law. So I foresee trouble. 

JOHN QUINN: Okay, so what actually sparked your interest in writing the book? What was the catalyst?

BILL REID: Well, okay. Yeah, so I tried to answer your question, but I got sidetracked. So that last class advice I wish I gave, I got really good feedback back from my students where I told them to think about their networks and their paths and then I met this young woman who now works for us today; she emailed me, Stanford law student 2021, and she emailed me and said that she had quote, revived the Plaintiff’s Association at Stanford Law School, and asked me about a summer job, which at the time we kind of had given up on summers, or summer clerkship programs, because they’re, as you know, very time intensive and we only hire a couple lawyers a year. 

But I was more curious about the Plaintiff’s Law Association. So I got on the phone with her, her name’s Julia Gokhberg, and she explained to me the mission of the Plaintiff’s Law Association, which was a student run organization designed to fill in what she viewed and other students viewed as a blind spot in law school where law schools like many people, fall into the trap of viewing plaintiff’s lawyers as the people on billboards and late night tv and basically like personal injury lawyers. 

And look, that’s a fair characterization for a lot of plaintiff’s lawyers, but it’s not comprehensive. So when I got to know Julia and I started learning her story and started realizing that students themselves were essentially trying to tell the message that my book maybe is a more comprehensive, you know, path for those students to think about the way to become a plaintiff’s lawyer. But they started this path on their own. I was teaching a class and maybe kind of dabbling around the edges, and my friend Tucker Max, in hearing the story, which I was relaying to him over a glass of wine one night, said, you ought to write a book.

And that’s when the bell went off. I’m like, wow, maybe you’re right. And so I began this path to kind of reach a broader audience than my class and to maybe be kind of a catalyst to help the PLAs grow nationally, which I don’t really think I could take any credit for that, but they’ve grown from five schools, back in 21 when I talked to Julia to today, I think there are over 50 maybe approaching 60 chapters of Plaintiff’s Law Associations at law schools across the country.

JOHN QUINN: In your book, you talk about what you characterize as the big law conveyor belt. What do you mean by that? 

BILL REID: What I mean by that is big law. And by the way, I don’t view your firm in the same way I view other big law firms, even though you have many lawyers. 

JOHN QUINN: That’s okay, we don’t take any of this personally. Bill, you can say exactly what you think. 

BILL REID: So I think that a lot of law students go to the OCI, and I realize OCI doesn’t necessarily take place physically on campus anymore. It’s still called OCI, but many lawyers, so like you may know that in U.S. News World Report, they report the main list of, you know, top law schools, but they have another list, and it’s called the List of Schools that send the highest percentage of their graduates to big law.

I think Northwestern’s number one, it’s 67% of all Northwestern graduates go to quote big law. Columbia’s not far behind. And like, they’re all private schools and they all send like 50 to two thirds per cent of their graduates to big law. And so this OCI process, which is moving earlier and earlier, occurs before really any other. You know, jobs become, well, I would say even known to students, but are available because look, the reality is OCI is a big law feeding ground. This is all my view. I’m not asking you to agree to it, but like firms like mine, we hire two or three people a year. We’re not gonna send a lawyer to a given law school to interview people all day for what at most will probably be one spot from that school in a given year.

So basically what happens is big law goes on campus every year and hires legions of bright young lawyers. And look, there are people, some of mine, like Mike Linsky is a good friend of mine; I really respect him. He’s an amazing lawyer. Mike Linsky is one of my partners, is actually one of the managing partners of our firm.

You may or may not know this, but Mike and I, Michael and I, we share, so he went to a same quote, caliber of law schools. I went to St. John’s and he went to Hofstra, and we both like to joke about people who have much fancier pieces of paper, but a lot of those people with fancy paper pieces of paper are going to big law, for no other reason than the starting salary and really not giving it a whole lot of thought beyond that. 

And so this fact that OCI is moving earlier and the majority of law school graduates, particularly from elite schools, are going into big law is what I describe the conveyor belt because that is the natural progress of a law student’s path.

Unless they do something deliberate to get off the conveyor belt, they are most likely to end up at a big law job. 

JOHN QUINN: Okay, well, I hear you saying that, you know, there is this phenomenon, this conveyor belt, that students are making decisions about where they’re going to go to work before they fully appreciate what all the options are.

But your book goes beyond that point. You actually make the case for being a plaintiff’s lawyer, initial caps. You talk about that, the virtues plaintiff’s practice. And, what you’re saying is that among the options that people, law students don’t learn about is the idea of being a plaintiff’s lawyer.

BILL REID: That actually describes my path and I think many other lawyers’ path. So I took some classes in law school that you could argue were plaintiffs oriented and I enjoyed them. But I felt then, and actually my judge that I clerked for was a former personal injury lawyer, but I fell into the mental trap that I think tort reform and many other kind of forces, forced students into, which is I felt like, if I was to pursue a path as a plaintiff’s lawyer, that is for the unsophisticated. 

And what sophisticated lawyers do is they go to big law, you pick the firm, and they become successful at big law. And so I didn’t really pay a whole lot attention to plaintiff’s law. But when, and that’s why I say I got lucky, but when, you, I know you know Alan Diamond, my former partner, but I got lucky ’cause I was at the U.S. Attorney’s office.

I was trying to find my way as a young trial lawyer, and I got a job in Austin, Texas with Diamond McCarthy. And I loved it. I mean, it was like the perfect job for me. And so this is what I ask young students to do because from that moment forward, like I knew that’s what I was meant to do, but if a young student were to ask themselves, and you could pick literally any subject matter you want, and again, in meritorious cases is what I’m saying, but would you want to have been one of the lawyers, and I don’t know if Quinn Emanuel did this, I doubt it, who represented the Sackler family or any other opioid manufacturer in defending them and perpetuating the continued sale of opioids or tobacco or you pick a asbestos or any other, like what I think we could all agree was a harmful product? Or alternatively, would you have rather have been the lawyer that held them accountable and ended their wrongful conduct sooner?

And then what I ask students to think about, and what I put in my book is imagine you’re on the proverbial rocking chair and you’re at the stage in your career where either you’ve retired or you’re winding down, and now you’re reflecting on your career. What would make you most proud to have been a lawyer?

What would you find most reward and satisfaction in having done? Would it be representing those wrongdoers and protecting them from the consequences of their wrongdoing? Or would you find more reward in holding them accountable? And I have this conversation with many people and it actually transcends beyond law, right?

Like it really comes down to what do you as a young person find meaning in? And if you choose a path of meaning, then the reward will come. But more importantly, when you’re not working because what you’re doing is something you love doing, then it’s just a passion. And it is for me a passion.

And I know a lot of lawyers, I’m sure you do too, that literally hate their jobs, hate their lives, don’t enjoy what they do. Now you’ve created something amazing and so what? Any lawyer that could do that, no matter the practice, I’m sure would be proud. Your firm is clearly a best of breed law firm who’s done many really cool plaintiff’s firm cases, but also does a lot of defense work. I only do what I love doing, and so I only do plaintiff’s work. But my message to students is pick what you love doing and do that. If it’s defense work, it’s defense work. 

JOHN QUINN: So Bill, there’ll be, some people will have heard your anecdote about reflecting on the end of your career in the rocking chair, and there’ll be some highly skilled lawyers.

They’ll think, wow, there was that case I was defending. I probably should have lost it, but because I’m so good, I’m so skilled, I got a defense verdict for that client in that case, and I’m super proud of that. What’s wrong with that? 

BILL REID: Nothing’s wrong with that. The satisfaction of representing a client is I think, what our profession is about.

But I would ask you to compare the path of doing that versus holding any of the wrongdoers in whatever space you find enjoyable to account, and then compare. What would you get more satisfaction from? So this is the way I would put it to you, John. I was a federal prosecutor for three years and I won virtually all the time because that’s what happens in federal court. I’ve won 24 of 25 jury trials in mostly drug cases, but I got no satisfaction out of it beyond the pure win, right? Like I didn’t really feel like I was achieving justice in a way. So what you’re describing is the defense lawyer who wins the case that they shouldn’t have won.

What you’re really telling me is they actually achieved injustice because the law should actually arrive at a just result. And if the lawyer, through his or her skill is actually causing the defendant to win in a case in which they would admit to themselves, the defendant should have lost. I don’t know that I could find passion in a career out of that.

JOHN QUINN: Well, I mean, some people would be really proud of their skill in obtaining a result in our system. Our system is kind of based on the whole idea that the skill and what plays out, what’s introduced in the courtroom and what the jury, the result, the jury delivers. I don’t know whether it’s not all you and I would agree it’s not always what we might agree as justice.

But it’s what the system delivers. It’s the best we as a human institution can do, and everybody plays a part in that. The jurors play a part, the plaintiff’s lawyer plays a part. The defense lawyer plays an important part. The judge plays a part. And we don’t have a system where we’re gonna consistently or always find truth and justice.

We don’t always know where truth and justice is right. Wouldn’t you agree with that? I mean, like you and I have a case, and I’m gonna, I’m not gonna remember all the details. You were the platoon of form you represented a plaintiff. It was some type of financial entity.

What do you call them? I forget what they’re called. BDC. And we represented a private equity firm. And I, again, I’m not gonna remember all the details. I know, you know, there was a dividend issue. The private equity firm controlled a company. There was a big dividend that they caused them to pay.

The company went into a financial distress. I don’t know if, I can’t remember if they went into bankruptcy or not. You and I litigated that case. The case settled, but I would submit to you what was truth and justice in that case is kind of hard to say.

BILL REID: I think that’s fair and I think that honestly characterizes a lot of cases that commercial lawyers do.

There isn’t necessarily someone with a white hat and someone with a black hat per se. It’s more two people with gray hats and you have to pick your own sense of justice. But let’s take a different example. I had a pro bono criminal case where my client should have never been indicted and I beat the government and got her an acquittal.

It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done as a lawyer. I can’t tell you every plaintiff’s case I’ve ever done has been so clearly I’m representing the person who’s in the right, and the defendant is the most vile, you know, institution on the planet. No, they don’t fall into those categories too often, but I would just say to you that.

My mindset of justice as a plaintiff’s lawyer is, I don’t take the case unless I like it. And that is a very different, like I put this in my book, it’s a very different intake criteria than most big law firms employ in the traditional defendant who they represent, right? Like I think the equation at most big law firms when they take a case is, can this client pay my bill?

Right? I don’t care if they actually did something wrong. Can this client pay my bill? And that’s it. And I look a little beyond that. I’m not saying I’m right all the time though, right?

JOHN QUINN: I mean, you say that, you ask yourself, do I like the case? Now, that’s subject to a couple of interpretations. One interpretation is, I believe my client is in the right and justice in this case means my plaintiff prevailing in this lawsuit.

Another interpretation, do I like the case? I think I can sell it to a jury. An awful lot of plaintiff’s lawyers, that’s their, the perspective they look at it. I think a jury will accept this. The plaintiff’s position on this, I mean wholly apart from where truth and justice is, are you saying that you’ll only take plaintiff’s cases where you’re convinced that the plaintiff, you know, the client’s on the side of truth and justice?

BILL REID: So it’s a two part equation and no, the answer is no. Not only would I prefer to see that in the case I take, absolutely. But there’s also another piece to this. Did the defendant do something wrong for which they should pay? Like, let’s just take an innocuous example of a corporate plaintiff and a legal malpractice case against a law firm that missed a statute of limitations deadline.

Alright, so it’s straight up. This isn’t like the plaintiff is lily white or terrible. It’s just the law firm made a mistake and it should pay for that mistake. It has insurance for that. That’s a simple equation for me. The more difficult, like, so the case you described, there was actually a fraudulent transfer, facts involved. Your client took a dividend. If the company ended up in bankruptcy, as you say, and then the question is, looking back, should that dividend have been paid? And then we could have a debate over whether the dividend was proper, whether the DS and OS honored their fiduciary duties, et cetera, et cetera.

Those are not clear cases of anyone’s totally right or anyone’s totally wrong, but really I think what I ask young students to think about is, as you are starting your career, wouldn’t you like to pick the path you are on? Wouldn’t you like if you knew that you could choose to represent the plaintiff or the defendant?

Wouldn’t you like to make that choice rather than work for a firm who’s intake criteria as well, this big corporate giant may have done something wrong, but they’re a traditional client of the firm and they pay our bills, so we’re gonna represent them. I think most young lawyers, if they could make the choice, would choose to be the plaintiff.

Again, in a meritorious case, and we could debate the criterion of what constitutes a meritorious case. 

JOHN QUINN: But yeah, no, I take the point that having the ability to choose what you’re gonna work on, that’s definitely a plus. That’s definitely attractive. Defense lawyers can make that choice too. What you’re saying, at least at your level of practice, you have a very high-end level of plaintiff’s practice, I would say you probably have more freedom and more discretion than most plaintiff’s lawyers do. Most plaintiff’s lawyers probably need the work, and if they have the time available and it seems like a good opportunity, they’ll, you know, they will choose, quote unquote to take the case.

But an awful lot of time there, you don’t, a lot of times when you take a case, you choose to take it, you just don’t know enough yet. If it involves science, you know, you need to get experts. You know, you need to see the emails, both sides emails, and you need to have some discovery. In the course of the process, you learn an awful lot that you didn’t know.

So it, I mean, it’s really hard to decide whether a case is ultimately meritorious or not at the intake point when you’re making that decision. 

BILL REID: So that is a totally fair observation for most plaintiff’s lawyers. And I don’t know how much you know about our specific practice, but probably two thirds of what we do as a firm is either, and these are two concentric circles that sometimes overlap, but either we represent bankruptcy trustees or we are suing a law firm.

Those are our two niche practice areas. And in both cases, we are able to get pre-suit discovery to a very high level, maybe not the full extent that we would get in true litigation, but when we represent a bankruptcy trustee, we generally have the server of the company that’s now in bankruptcy.

We are able to take 2004 discovery in the bankruptcy process. And the same is true in legal malpractice. The client file, as you know, is the clients. So we always send a client file demand. We always get a pretty good sense for what the file is. And so I would say your comment is fair for most plaintiff’s law firms. We’re a little bit different, but I would guess I would just go back to something you said a moment ago, which is that I think it’s fair to say that we can be more choosy now 15 years into Reid Collins and 25 years since I joined Diamond McCarthy.

But like take Susman Godfrey, or take anybody that you would view as best of breed. The same is true of them but they had to get there and I had to get here. Right. And I had to kiss a lot of frogs to get here. And I would say the same is true in the defense bar, right? Like the Wachtell’s and the Cravath’s and the Quinn Emanuel’s, they’re not taking, if they take a plaintiff’s case at all, they’re not taking a plaintiff’s case that they don’t really and truly like, at least on a contingent fee basis.

JOHN QUINN: Yes. That’s fair. That’s fair. 

BILL REID: But maybe true that you can be at your level, at your firm’s level and other firms in your category in the top tier can be more choosy, even on the defense side. Whereas there are a lot of big, like maybe beyond the top 20 firms, however you would put the top 20, they get a little bit more hungry for work too.

And that’s when you get into litigation funding. And, you know, I think intake criteria gets perhaps a little diluted, just as many plaintiff’s lawyers are. 

JOHN QUINN: Yeah, so I mean, it’s your firm, the Susman and Godfrey firm, a handful of other firms are kind of in a special situation that you have this ability to assess cases upfront. 

You get the, you have access to evidence. You have a basis to make a decision that we’re bringing cases on the side of truth and justice. But for the vast, overwhelming majority of plaintiff’s lawyers, that’s probably not true for most of the cases they’re filing. They like the case. They think it has some merit to it.

Certainly, if they’re gonna bet their own money and time on a contingent fee basis, they have to believe that a jury is gonna accept their point of view, but they have no basis to conclude that their client is on the side of the right necessarily.

BILL REID: I don’t know that I entirely agree with that, but look on the margins, you’re not, I don’t totally disagree with you, but I don’t totally agree with you in the sense that, look, I’ve got enough experience now having done this for however long; I’ve done it, 33 years, that when I hear a fact pattern and look at the underlying documents, I generally know this is a pretty good case or this isn’t, and I’m on the intake.

That’s kind of what I do every day. But the other thing that we do as a firm, and I don’t know if you know this about us, but we don’t sue first, we sue as a last resort. So everybody we sue, and there are exceptions to every rule, but everybody that Reid Collins sues receives a draft ready to be filed complaint along with an invitation to have a business discussion.

And we’re perfectly willing to be told you’ve got it wrong and we have the confidence in our work to do that. It’s also smart as a success fee lawyer because once we invoke litigation, it often takes on a life of its own. It’s very inefficient at dispute resolution, which is again, profitable for hourly fee guys, not very profitable for success fee guy.

So we give everyone a draft lawsuit and there have been times where lawyers on the other side have said, well, what about this or that? Or have you seen this document? And it’s either forced us to regroup and retool or to give up altogether? Can I tell you that we’ve given up a lot of times? No,not many.

But look, I mean, the bottom line is I’m not in the business of wasting my time. If I’m missing something and you as my adversary in looking at my draft complaints, say, hey, you’ve missed something and you’re about to waste your time and my client’s money, you should see this – I of course wanna see that.

Right. I wanna be right. 

JOHN QUINN: Well, I mean, you’ve described your practices, you know, and your passion for taking plaintiff’s cases, and you’ve qualified that a couple of times by saying meritorious cases, and you’ve explained to us how you’re able to reach that judgment, the cases that you bring on meritorious.

But there’s an awful lot of cases out there that are, most cases I would submit that are filed by plaintiff’s lawyers and most plaintiff’s lawyers, they bring cases and they’re not in a position, they don’t make that same judgment that you make. In other words, as I read your book, it’s like you’re saying this is incredibly satisfying to be able to bring cases that are meritorious.

And you kind of equate that in your book with plaintiff’s practice. Plaintiff’s practice, the satisfactions of it, you equate with bringing meritorious cases. I think that what I submit to you, that only applies to kind of a handful of the plaintiff’s lawyers out there. Most cases that are brought, they’re just not in a position to make that judgment.

There’s so many cases that are brought with the expectation that I think I can persuade a jury to accept this, whether or not it’s on the side of truth or justice, whatever that means. Do you understand what I’m saying? 

BILL REID: I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t necessarily agree that it’s as small a fraction of all cases as you’re suggesting.

Okay. So I think this is the same thing that any opioid defense lawyer, any tobacco defense lawyer, any asbestos defense lawyer or the list goes on, could have said for years. And frankly, I don’t have a high degree of respect for most of the plaintiff’s lawyers in that practice area, but I can’t deny, particularly in opioids because I put it in my book and my friend Brad Beckworth was one of the lead lawyers in it. They undeniably caught one of the biggest instances of corporate wrongdoing in recent memory and put an end to it where no governmental entity stepped in. 

So look, your firm, I don’t have precise numbers.I don’t know if you’d agree with this, but it’s probably what, 80 20 in terms of defense work. Now, are you telling me that the defense cases you have where people come to Quinn Emanuel and pay millions of dollars to defend themselves? There’s no wrongdoing in the vast majority of them. I don’t know, man. I wouldn’t agree with that. I, look, but, you’re really asking the following question: if I had to choose, would I rather represent as the defense lawyer, the defendant in a case that maybe didn’t entirely lack merit, but where the defendant had the better side of the equities and justice? And the answer to that question is no.

I would not rather represent the plaintiff in that case. I’d rather not represent either party is the point. Like, okay, find reward out of being the defense lawyer in that case. 

JOHN QUINN: Alright, so your satisfaction really, it’s when you’re embracing or, you know, explaining the virtues of a plaintiff’s side practice, you really are specifically talking about cases.

Cases where you’re convinced the plaintiff’s side is meritorious. 

BILL REID: Yes. And I think we’re having a philosophical disagreement about the percentage of times. Yeah. Actually as a meritorious case in relation to the whole, right?

JOHN QUINN: I mean, there’s also an interesting philosophical question about what truth is in so many of these cases there.

You know, because, I would submit maybe the case that you and I had together at the end of the day, someone would have to decide if we hadn’t settled that case. Both sides would have good arguments. I expect you had some good arguments. We had some good arguments. Most, an awful lot of the time, my experience, it just isn’t clear where truth and justice lies, and the system is the one just of reaching a resolution rather than reaching truth and justice, quote unquote.

BILL REID: How about this? I’m just thinking of an example because you’re kind of talking about the world as more black and white than it really is. How about this example, John? So let’s say we had a legal malpractice case and you were representing a law firm defendant and liability was not even debatable. The lawyers missed a deadline, botched a transactional document, had a conflict of interest, whatever the story is that you and I would philosophically agree that there was liability.

But our disagreement stemmed from, I think the case is a hundred million dollar case. And you’re like, that’s a joke. The case is like $8 to $10 million soaking wet. That’s it, right? So our debate is not who was right and who was wrong. Our debate is just simply what is the consequence of the wrongdoing, right?

And I think that accurately describes a lot of litigation in America, right? There is something done wrong, there’s a breach of contract or some other liability that has occurred or liability inducing conduct that has ocurred and now the lawyers are having a debate of what’s the number, what’s the price?

It’s like what are the the damages? Correct? That’s a damages issue. Okay, so I guess let’s just ask the same question in that framework. I don’t think there’s a world in which I would wanna represent the defendant and arguing simply that the plaintiff’s damages number was all wet. Now, I do think that is a role that lawyers should serve, and it’s a role that big law does serve and serves well.

People actually specialize in this. But the question I have for you, and the question I posed in my book as a young lawyer, what would you rather do? Would you rather be the lawyer pushing the envelope for more damages on a case of undebatable, wrongful conduct? Or would you rather be the lawyer and would you find satisfaction in limiting the amount of damages in, for example, a jury trial?

These are what young lawyers should really think about when they’re embarking on a career. I think. 

JOHN QUINN: Yeah, no, absolutely. I agree with that, but usually in that case where, you know, liability is so clear, or I’ll say usually often you have a plaintiff who’s making an extravagant damages claim, a damages claim, which is just, you know, beyond the pale. And you might get a lot of satisfaction out of puncturing that ask and persuading the jury that a fairer number is much lower than that. Now the plaintiff is trying to put something over on them with this exorbitant number. I can see some satisfaction in that. 

BILL REID: I can too, but I would prefer not to do it. But let’s say, you sound a lot like a defense lawyer for a guy whose firm has had a number of billion dollar plaintiff wins over the last…

JOHN QUINN: Oh, you’re a plaintiff’s lawyer. This wouldn’t be, this conversation wouldn’t be fun if I didn’t take the other side. 

BILL REID: No, but look, I think this is an honest debate and there’s not necessarily a right or wrong. It’s more a question and my book is really aimed at forcing young students to think, as you and I are talking, what would they like to do with their career?

Remember a career like, I don’t know how many hours you are to your career, but if you assume 2000 hours per year, I’ve been doing this 33 years. I’m well above 60,000 hours, probably closer to 80 or 90. If you don’t love what you do and you’re not passionate about it, then you’re gonna be like, I think the majority of lawyers that are really unhappy with practicing law, largely because they didn’t think about these things, and they end up in, call it the service partner role.

And they don’t really have a lot of say about what they do. They’re not the leaders. I just think that describes a lot of lawyers. 

JOHN QUINN: Yeah, that’s another thing that you address in your book is, you talk about the unhappiness in the profession, some statistics about the percentage of lawyers who report that they’re really unhappy with their jobs, mental illness, substance abuse, and the like, I mean, you wanna talk a little bit about that? What you write about on those subjects? 

BILL REID: Well, so I researched all that. I can’t tell you that it’s like a law review article with a footnote for it. But there is a wealth of data, a lot of it from the ABA that I cite to it, which reflects the reality that you and I both know that, lawyers suffer higher divorce rates, higher depression rates, higher suicide rates, higher substance abuse rates than almost any other profession in America. 

And so then that only forced me to ask the question why. And I try to get into that in my book, but I think the answer, at least for me is that a lot of lawyers didn’t think through their career and ended up on a career path that wasn’t for them, however you would describe that.

And so I hope that, my book isn’t gonna change the industry, it’s not gonna change law schools, but if it changes the life or the career path of even a few young law students for the better it’s a win for me. 

JOHN QUINN: Yeah, no, I mean it, I think one of the great points you make is that young people should know what their options are before they commit to what, on that conveyor belt, before they commit to that one path.

And I think law schools listen 

BILL REID: And I think law schools listen will in this, having OCI in January is irresponsible. And I think law schools have the power to say no, but they are so beholden to big law and to the rankings and the whole system that they just bow when the big firms say bow. And so law firms don’t get to come on campus unless law firm administrators say you’re welcome.

And so by putting OCI in January, I think it’s a crime. Maybe that’s too strong a word, but they’re not doing these students any service, they’re certainly not. The law students themselves have to have people like me. I’m going to like 10 of the top 14 campuses this fall, starting this Thursday, and so my message to students is, don’t fall trapped to the January OCI.

Look beyond OCI find your own path and I think you’ll be better off. And look, are some people gonna listen to me? Yes. Are many people gonna ignore me and get on the conveyor belt? Yes. But here’s where I’d like to spend the last few minutes, if you don’t mind, which is, I would like to have this same discussion about plaintiff’s defendant that we just had about what you think about AI’s effect on the, call it the legal business, in America in the future.

JOHN QUINN: Yeah. Let’s, but before we talk about that, I wanna pay you a compliment, and that is reading your book and talking to you reminded me of Gerry Spence, a great trial lawyer who just recently passed away. The guy had, I don’t know how much you followed his career I think one of the greatest books, and I’m kind of an aficionado of books about trial practice and books written by trial lawyers, to my mind, one of the best, maybe the best is Gunning for Justice. I don’t know if you’ve read that book. It’s a great book. It’s a great book. The insights it gives into him personally and his life, the way he saw his practice, which, sounds a lot like the way you describe your practice, is an incredible great trial lawyer and he used to have these seminars up in Wyoming. 

He had some kind of institute or something he called it, and it was for plaintiff’s lawyers only. The notice said something like, if you’re a defense lawyer, don’t come until you’re ready, you know, to see the light of truth and justice, et cetera.

And then you’ll see the light ultimately, and then you’ll be welcomed at our seminars. He definitely believed that there was a right side to things and that he had a similar enthusiasm for the plaintiff’s side of cases. 

BILL REID: Well, that’s incredibly flattering. I don’t know that I deserve that level of compliment, but thank you, 

JOHN QUINN: AI in law firms? Look, I think at a certain level, ultimately it’s gonna have a huge impact. I don’t even, and, you know, I think the, the death of the big law pyramid, the prediction of that is, uh, you know, it’s far premature to start talking about that. I don’t even see the inkling, the beginnings of changes in practice brought by AI that would translate to our need for fewer associates.

To be honest, yes, we need associates who have different skills, associates who have the ability to optimize the technology, but I think AI is not gonna replace associates, at least at our level of practice for the kinds of complex, high-end cases that we work on. I don’t think it’s gonna replace associates, it’s gonna make them more productive.

It’s gonna make them more efficient. I think it’ll be an enhancement, not a replacement. Look, I kind of analogize it to diagnostic radiologists. You know, we’ve known for years and years that, you know, AI or, you know, similar technologies, are as good or better than diagnostic radiologists at reading film, reading diagnostic images, x-rays and the like.

But we’re still graduating, you know, diagnostic radiologists. And it’s not because, I don’t think it’s simply inertia, I don’t think it’s simply because, you know, the economic incentives of the medical schools, it’s that radiologists can do a better job, they can do more, they can be more productive, and they can be more accurate and efficient if they also have these tools.

So I think it’ll be a similar proposition with law firms. I’m sure at some practice levels of certain types of practices, it’s gonna replace people, but I don’t even see the beginnings of that at our firm. So that’s just my reaction to that. 

BILL REID: I don’t profess to know your firm better than you. That would be incredibly arrogant and foolish. But I do think that, I listen to your podcast quite often, and there was a podcast you had maybe two months ago or so, in which some of your lawyers had tried a case using AI. They got called in, like, I don’t even know, five weeks, four weeks before trial and they were able to try the case with the help of AI.

So when I heard that story, all I concluded from it is they probably could have been hired five weeks before trial, even if no legal work had been done by anyone else and still done the same thing. If any of that is true, even on the percentages, then what? I think the reality is, and this is what I believe, is that fewer lawyers can do the job of what more lawyers did in the past.

And so all I’m suggesting in my book is that the moment that law firms, and I think it will be the elite law firms first, and Simpson Thacher already does this. Lynn Neunner is a friend of mine and has talked about it with me, where, if law firms find it in their business interest to move to an alternative to hourly billing, like let’s just say you get a client and you get a case that $15 million was kind of the general spend on a case of this magnitude in the past, and they say, hey, how about you just pay us the 15?

We get rid of the billing statements and we stack the cases we think appropriate. If any variant of that occurs, then law firms will transform into like every other business, the type business that loses money by being inefficient, makes more money by being efficient, which is of course the opposite of the hourly fee model.

So my premise is big law’s not dying. It’s not going away, but it will become more efficient and maybe not everyone, and maybe not even like, you know, maybe the pyramid doesn’t turn to the wine bottle as I suggest, but maybe the pyramid looks a little bit more like the Eiffel Tower as the efficiency of the enterprise grows and as the, the enterprise being the law firm decides we’re gonna change our economic model. 

If that occurs even on the margins, then I think the need for young lawyers will be reduced. The need for service partners will be reduced. And I think it’s people with client relationships, trial skills, like the team that you reflected in your episode, they’re gonna all win.

And you might find things like the $25,000 an hour lawyer and those sorts of things. 

JOHN QUINN: Yeah. No, Bill, I think those are all fair comments. The thing I remember from that interview, the podcast that you referenced, the team that tried that case with AI experts from a consultant, four of them actually embedded in the team, was, they related how they could ask the AI natural language questions like, what’s the best evidence that so and so is lying to so and so about this subject, and you press a button and you get that now.

If somebody spent the time, could you have come up with that list? Yes, almost certainly. But to be able to get that instantly in the middle of trial is kind of amazing. 

BILL REID: I think that’s where we’re headed. So who knows what this looks like in three to five years? And look, it was just a fun chapter where I’m just asking people to think about the future.

And honestly, I don’t think law schools are really thinking about it in this way, right? They have classes on AI and how to do legal research in the Harvard world and things like that, but they’re not really thinking about how it’s going to affect the actual practice of law because law schools don’t live in that world.

JOHN QUINN: So yeah. Anything else that listeners should know about your book? 

BILL REID: No, I think we’ve kind of covered it. Other than that, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. I think you gave me a quote, a run for my money, but I think the one thing I’m coming away with is that I don’t agree that the vast majority of plaintiff’s cases are unmeritorious.

I just don’t agree with that, but I have a limited view as a commercial lawyer. 

JOHN QUINN: That’s not my view. My view is most of the time you simply can’t tell. Okay. Well. You know, there are some you can tell are meritorious or you can tell are unmeritorious. That doesn’t stop most plaintiff’s lawyers from advancing those cases if they think there’s a buck to be made.

But then there’s also a whole bunch where you just don’t know. You know, don’t know the outcome.

BILL REID: What would be the most prudent way to resolve that issue without resorting to two years of discovery and litigation? Like, what does the future look like in a world in which that problem could be addressed?

JOHN QUINN: Well, I think from the people I talk to and I think AI is going to mean more lawsuits, but they’ll be faster resolved. Okay. I mean, they’re already, you know, early stage companies out there, and I’ve done a couple of these podcasts. You may have listened to one or two of them where basically they hoover up all, you know, like all kinds of data compliance, data permits, regulations, court filings, regulatory filings from all over.

Then they sift them and they identify claims. And if you subscribe to this, they’ll serve up to you. Here’s a class action. You know, here’s another one. You know, ingredients in foods or, you know, the strength or weight or, you know, parameters of concrete or whatever it is. So there’ll be more claims that are identified, but because there’ll also be more transparency.

So I think it’ll result in faster resolutions, or at least that’s my hope. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. 

BILL REID: So do you think that form scheduling orders in federal court will have trial dates in less than a year and call it five years? It’s hard to say. But I think if we end up in a world in which that’s reality, then that puts a natural limit on how many hours a law firm could bill by the hour.

And it’s just one more reason why I think law firms in that environment, that at least the ones that are at the top tier could dictate their terms and they might find it more profitable to say, we’re not gonna bill you for a year, we’re just gonna bill you 15, 20 million bucks over that year. And, I think firms will be able to get that. I do, like some the winners will.

JOHN QUINN: Yeah. Bill, it’s been great talking to you. Thank you for joining us. We’ve been speaking with Bill Reid about his new book Fighting Bullies: The Case for a Career in Plaintiff’s Law. This is John Quinn and this has been Law disrupted. 

Thank you for listening to Law disrupted with me, John Quinn. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and review on your chosen podcast app to stay up to date with the latest episodes. You can sign up for email alerts at our website Law disrupted fm or follow me on X at JBQ Law or at Quinn Emanuel.

Thank you for tuning in.

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Published: Oct 28 2025