Written by one of the nation’s most successful commercial trial lawyers, the book makes the case for a career in plaintiffs’ law. Available September 23.
Bill Reid is done pretending the traditional legal career path makes sense for most young lawyers. Tired of the outdated myths and stale career advice that dominate law schools, Reid is turning his attention to the future – one where lawyers aren’t forced to choose between making money and making a difference.
Reid built his career in complex commercial litigation and launched the boutique national trial firm Reid Collins & Tsai in 2009. Since then, he’s racked up a series of high-profile wins, including a landmark $300M settlement in the Renren Derivative Litigation – one of the largest of its kind. His mission to hold powerful institutions accountable has delivered billions of dollars in recoveries for clients.
“Plaintiffs’ law is where you can find purpose and prosperity,” says Reid. “It’s where you get to choose your battles, work on cases that matter and build a career you want.”
In his new book, "Fighting Bullies," Reid pulls back the curtain on the legal industry – exposing how it really works, what law schools aren’t telling students, and why the plaintiffs’ bar may be the most meaningful – and lucrative – corner of the profession.
“Big Law profits from funneling smart, idealistic students into a rigid, high-burnout system,” says Reid. “If you do not make your own plan, you’ll be following someone else’s.”
Part memoir, part manifesto, "Fighting Bullies" is Reid’s no-nonsense guide to building a legal career with impact. He’s not just critiquing the old model – he’s investing in what comes next and equipping the next generation to do it better.
Reid sat down with Lawdragon to talk about what inspired the book, why Big Law may be the most vulnerable business model in the legal world and how AI is shaking the foundations of the profession.
“My main concern with AI isn’t efficiency – it’s confidentiality,” says Reid. “AI may be powerful, but it opens the door to serious privacy risks. You're not just using the tool – they're using your data.”
Lawdragon: Tell our readers about the book. Why did you decide to write "Fighting Bullies"?
Bill Reid: When I went to law school, there were almost no resources to help students understand what law school was really about – the agenda, what you'd actually learn and what you'd have to figure out on your own. There was "One L" by Scott Turow and "The Paper Chase" TV series from the '80s, but those glorified the whole "mean professor" model of legal education and weren’t useful in any practical way. No one explained what you could actually do as a lawyer or how to plan your path. I think that’s still largely true today, law school in the U.S. was never designed to help students figure out their careers – it’s a theoretical, academic exercise. You can graduate without ever seeing a trial or stepping into a courtroom, and still have no clue what to do with your degree. Worse, you assume someone will eventually tell you, but they don’t.
There’s this process called on-campus interviewing or OCI, where employers come to recruit. The truth no one tells you upfront is that Big Law firms will dominate OCI because they hire the most graduates. If you want to be a plaintiffs’ lawyer, you will most likely have to find that job yourself – it won’t come to you. You might see a few public interest law employers on campus, but they’re the exception. OCI is now moving up – most of the T-14 law schools are now hosting 2L clerkship OCI in January and February of a student’s 1L year.
The supposed choice has always been Big Law for big money or public interest for little to no money. No one talks about becoming a plaintiffs’ lawyer.
My book, "Fighting Bullies," aims to paint a fuller picture – especially of plaintiffs’ law. Basic things no one told me in law school: you can be a plaintiffs’ or defense lawyer, specialize in IP or antitrust and more. Sitting through a class won’t show you what the work really looks like. It’s up to you to explore different roles before committing. But Big Law firms like to give exploding offers that expire in 48-72 hours, forcing quick decisions. They want to be your only option.
The supposed choice has always been Big Law for big money or public interest for little to no money. No one talks about becoming a plaintiffs’ lawyer. Many elite schools still carry a bias that the plaintiffs’ work is beneath their grads – it’s for “dreg” schools, the ones whose lawyers show up in late-night ads. And sure, there are bad plaintiffs’ lawyers who reinforce stereotypes, but that’s not the full story.
Students get an incomplete picture of legal careers, so they take the visible, highest-paying path – Big Law. But those jobs are often thankless. Big firms might hire 100 students, but after five years, only about 10 remain. The rest leave, many abandoning law entirely. The ones who stay find their options are more limited.
I believe most students should pursue judicial clerkships – not just for experience, but to buy time. An extra 18 to 24 months to make an informed choice can be a game changer. Without that buffer, your second-year summer job is statistically likely to be where you start your full-time career. And that decision often happens just 10 months after you start law school – how can anyone, 10 months in, possibly have enough information to make a good long-term decision? You have to choose blind. And far too many students just take the $225K offer and think they’re going to figure it out later.
LD: So why is there such high burnout for these Big Law firms?
BR: I offer a lot of conjecture here. I was a young lawyer at a regional firm that billed by the hour, and I got to handle both plaintiff and defense cases – but it still wasn’t enough. I don’t blame the firm – it was probably better than most Big Law experiences. I was a federal prosecutor for three years and put nearly 1,000 poor, largely Hispanic young men in jail. I felt awful about it. There was no satisfaction, no sense of doing anything good.
Translate that to Big Law: if you’re working on memos the client never sees, and all that matters is billing hours – not quality or winning – it’s demoralizing. It’s like the worst fraternity hazing – endless pointless tasks to prove you belong, with no real experience gained. But if you survive long enough, maybe you get to boss others around and, just maybe, do something that actually matters.
But what if you’re just defending corporations who pollute water, sell dangerous drugs or wreck the financial system? What’s the point? Do you think senior lawyers defending banks from the financial crisis feel proud that their clients dodged billions in penalties?
Plaintiffs’ law is different. There’s often a tangible result that matters to a real person. I don’t take cases unless I believe the defendant did wrong and the plaintiff deserves compensation. I’d rather build something than destroy it. I’d rather hold someone accountable in a positive way – especially when others are too scared to take on powerful institutions. Like suing law firms – everyone’s afraid to do that. They think law firms are powerful, but they’re babies. Honestly, it gives me pleasure to do what others won’t.
If you’re working on memos the client never sees, and all that matters is billing hours – not quality or winning – it’s demoralizing. It’s like the worst fraternity hazing – endless pointless tasks to prove you belong, with no real experience gained.
LD: In "Fighting Bullies," you highlight major cases – like asbestos, tobacco and opioids – that truly changed society. But people always bring up the McDonald’s hot coffee case as proof that Americans are overly litigious. Can you explain what that case was really about, and what people tend to get wrong?
BR: You’ve got to ask – who’s pushing this warped view of the McDonald’s case? It’s tort reformers. It’s propaganda. Look at who’s behind tort reform. It started with asbestos defendants, then tobacco companies – basically, all the people doing harmful stuff. Monsanto is evil – they sell poisonous crap. And they just don't want to pay the price. So instead of changing their behavior, they vilify those trying to hold them accountable.
I write about this in the book. For years, asbestos companies quietly settled claims, hid behind confidentiality agreements and used legions of lawyers to cover their tracks. Did they stop selling asbestos? No. They kept going. When that didn’t work, they pushed tort reform. They twisted the McDonald’s case into a joke – “some lady spilled coffee and got a million bucks.” But that’s not the real story. McDonald’s coffee was significantly hotter than normal. They’d had internal warnings for years. The woman who spilled it had third-degree burns on her crotch and required multiple skin grafts over two years. It was horrific – and entirely preventable. The jury’s award wasn’t outrageous – it reflected just a couple days of McDonald’s coffee profits. The system worked.
Yet tort reformers use the distorted version of that case to demonize plaintiffs’ lawyers. But the real question is: Why did McDonald’s ignore a decade of warnings? Why did asbestos companies keep selling something they knew was dangerous? Why did cigarette companies lie for decades about addiction and health risks? They refused to take responsibility – and attacked anyone who tried to hold them accountable nonetheless.
Now, on the plaintiffs’ side, it’s evolved too. The early asbestos lawyers – like Motley Rice – did incredible work. But now, it’s become so easy to make money on an asbestos case that anyone with a bar card can do it. Late-night TV and billboards aren’t about lawyering – they’re about client acquisition. When you can profit simply by convincing a client to hire you, regardless of legal skill or effort, you attract bottom feeders and free riders.
LD: Let’s talk AI. Why do you believe it’s going to change everything and bring what you called 'forced efficiency' to the industry?
BR: You can’t really grasp AI’s impact on law without understanding Big Law economics. And most young lawyers have no idea how that works. That’s why I spent time explaining it in the book.
Right now, inefficiency is profitable – as long as the billable hour model sticks around. Firms make more money by over-hiring and overstaffing – 12 lawyers on a 6-lawyer job means more revenue. That’s the business model. It’s not subtle, and it’s not rare. But if I’m a GC in three to five years, I’ll want AI-assisted doc review. I wouldn’t trust AI for final output yet – my biggest concern is confidentiality, not efficiency – but that will change. And as AI becomes embedded in legal work, clients will demand efficiency. That undermines the entire logic of the billable hour.
As AI becomes embedded in legal work, clients will demand efficiency. That undermines the entire logic of the billable hour.
Lynn Neuner at Simpson Thacher is a powerhouse litigator and she told me she’s already moving to a flat fee model. I suspect that she is not the only Big Law lawyer who is starting to utilize alternative billing. And the minute Big Law shifts away from hourly billing, even partially, it starts to look like every other business. Efficiency becomes profitable, AI becomes very important. Over-hiring and overstaffing won’t work anymore. That’s the moment everything changes – not just in law, but in consulting, finance, all of it.
Legal research is one piece of the puzzle, and we’ve had forms of natural language search and early AI for years. I don’t think the real disruption is going to happen there. Where I do see massive change is in how we handle large data sets. When AI can produce a legal memo, surface key facts, create timelines and suggest deposition questions – all in real time – that’s transformative. Tasks that once took thousands of lawyer hours will happen almost instantly. Will lawyers still be needed? Absolutely. But the nature of the work changes. So here’s my message to young lawyers – make sure you're the one still standing. Be the trial lawyer, the relationship builder or the person managing the AI – not just the cog doing routine tasks. Because the routine task lawyers will absolutely be the first to go.
LD: What's the most personally satisfying case that you've handled in your career?
BR: I did a pro bono case for Olga Hernandez in 2018. She was indicted in federal court on bribery charges and I got her a full acquittal. When the verdict was read, her whole family was crying in the courtroom. The judge was annoyed at me for providing a strong defense. I basically had to try the case against the federal prosecutor and the judge who co-prosecuted the case, and I prevailed against them all.
Olga was a school board member accused of taking bribes in exchange for her vote. But the real story was this: She and the rest of the board unanimously voted to approve insurance contracts – contracts that came out of a rigged system.
The district’s insurance advisor was taking bribes from the insurance agents. Those agents were the ones actually paying the bribes. Every one of them pled guilty. Every one of them testified against Olga. And every one of them admitted she had no idea the bribes were happening. She was just voting along with the staff’s recommendation, like all her fellow board members. But here’s where it got complicated: She’d gone to dinners, events, even Spurs games and trips with those agents. She was a lifelong secretary who had never been in a position where people befriended her for the wrong reasons. She thought they were her friends.
She named her dog after me. She calls me every year on December 19th – she calls it our anniversary. Says I saved her life. It was awesome in every possible way.
LD: What would be your advice for young lawyers who might want to start a plaintiffs' firm of their own?
BR: You have to be in the trenches. You need to experience the path you think might be as rewarding for you as mine has been for me. Theory is not the same as practice and the only way to know for sure is to try things for yourself.
I encourage young lawyers to sample as many different practice areas as they think might interest them. Then look three to five years ahead on each of those paths. Ask – is that person where I want to be at that stage in my career? Then go further – are those partners doing work I’d find rewarding? And just as important – find your people. Even if the work is right, if the people are not your kind of people, then that firm might not be for you.
Now, forming your own firm? That’s a whole other leap. It’s hard at any point in time, but it’s nearly impossible without experience. Without experience, you have no clients. So if you want to be a trial lawyer – not just a litigator – go get trial experience. In every generation I’ve seen since I started practicing, it’s the lawyers who get that experience early who have the most flexibility and control over their careers. If your alternative is sitting in Big Law pushing paper and getting no real experience, you’re better off in court. That’s the stuff AI can’t replace. Once you have real trial experience, you’ll know what subject matter actually interests you. That’s when you can start thinking seriously about building your own firm – ideally with peers at your level.
It also always helps to do the things others can’t or won’t. For me, that’s suing law firms. That might sound boring to you, but I love it. And there’s still plenty of room in that space – I get calls every day, mostly because very few people are willing to do it.
