The Future of Law Is Fewer Lawyers?

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Are you an attorney looking to learn some things from a seasoned attorney? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Tyson chats with William Reid. who shares insights from his career fighting institutional “bullies,” the challenges and rewards of plaintiff-side practice, and the importance of work-life balance and being present as a parent. 

William shares some insights on the challenges of practicing criminal law. One challenge is leveling the playing field for those who don’t have access to justice. This can lead to many people not getting the conclusions they deserve because they can’t afford a lawyer who will fight for them. Many lawyers are only in it to make their money and not fight for their clients. For William and his colleagues, they work to ensure their clients are the main priority.

William and Tyson talk about using AI in the legal space. William used AI when he has jury trials. He will read his opening or closing statements into the AI machine and it pops out some good snippets that he will use in court. AI tools can be used as time saving devices in an environment where time is not on your side. For William, trial prep time dropped significantly and this can give you more time to focus on other things.

Listen in to learn more!

• 2:25  Motivation for Fighting Giants in Law
• 5:20  Challenges in Criminal Defense and Big Law
• 8:09  AI’s Impact on Legal Fees and Law Practice
• 17:54  Practical Uses of AI in Legal Work
• 27:21  Starting a Law Firm and Defining Success
• 39:15  Building and Hiring a Great Legal Team
• 48:26  Empowering Young Lawyers and Team Success
  
  

 Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here. 


Connect with William:

• Website 
• Linkedin 

Creators and Guests

Host

Tyson Mutrux

Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.

What is Maximum Lawyer?

Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.

Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.

If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.

Tyson Mutrux 00:00:01 So Bill, I want to jump in in a spot that has nothing to do with really running a law firm. But you say that one of your proudest accomplishments, it's not any verdict or anything. It's raising three children with your wife and trying to instill courage, integrity and work ethic in them. And I, I wonder, we have a lot of parents that listen to this show and watch this show, and I wonder what advice do you have for parents out there that are trying to do the same thing?

William Reid 00:00:27 I am the least qualified person to give parental advice that you could possibly imagine. but I think part of it is just being there, right? So you just got to be there. And, I think a lot of lawyers are. Well, I think work life balance is really hard for all professionals. Forget lawyers. And so I like to think that I have really good work life balance. I would, say at the same time, my wife would vastly disagree with that statement, but, no, in comparison to a lot of my friends.

William Reid 00:00:59 I think that, concentrating on your relationships with your friends and your family and doing things outside of work and hanging out with people who aren't lawyers are all part of the mix of, I think, what makes people well-rounded. So take that outside of law. Whatever your profession is, I think it's important to devote enough time to your relationships. In my case, the most important relationships are my family. But I would say, you know, your friends or the family you choose, and I and I would put them very close to my family in terms of priority in my life. And so I think just being there is my answer.

Tyson Mutrux 00:01:35 You know, anytime someone says that, you know, they are the expert on a topic, I kind of my, my ears perk up and I and I'm a little, maybe it's a red flag. You did the opposite of that. And you say I'm the last person so that my ears also perk up and maybe think maybe I should listen to what this guy says, because you're not putting yourself out there to be the expert on the topic.

Tyson Mutrux 00:01:56 But I want to ask you a little variation of it. What advice do you think your wife would give? Because you did kind of defer to her a bit there. So I wonder, what advice do you think that she would give about about instilling those those values in your kids?

William Reid 00:02:09 I don't think her advice would be very different. I think you got to be got to be a good listener. As a parent, you got to be involved. And, I mean, do your best. Right. Like, so I, I don't profess to be, any expert at parenting, but I do try. I think that's a big part of it.

Tyson Mutrux 00:02:25 So that's good. That's a big part of it. So you I mean, you really spent a career taking on giants. And when you look back, what shaped that, that instinct or that drive to confront bullies rather than taking more, maybe the safer route when it comes to law or the more conventional route?

William Reid 00:02:45 Well, it's just no fun.

William Reid 00:02:47 So, I mean, so most lawyers hate what they do, right? it's just a fact. And so, you know, I wrote my book and I talked to law students across the country. And in fact, I'm going to Baylor tomorrow. to have my little talk that I do with Baylor will be a little different, because they're not sending legions of their folks to big law, which I am on a kind of mission, an anti big law mission, which I know is not really your audience. But at the end of the day, I think if you're passionate and again, this like transcends law, if you're passionate about what you do, then maybe work isn't even work, right? And that's why I think I am. So when I think about what makes me excited to be a lawyer, I think that most people start out on the path of I want to right wrongs, I want to achieve justice. I want to do something that I could be proud of. Most people start on that path, and I think the explanation for why lawyers have such high, you know, depression rates, anxiety rates, substance abuse, divorce, the list goes on, is because so many lawyers end up on a path that doesn't permit them or allow them to actually achieve justice.

William Reid 00:03:58 So, Look, I know some of your audience are criminal defense lawyers. I've done a little criminal defense. Like, the coolest thing I've ever done as a lawyer was a pro bono criminal case. But it's really hard work. I mean, like, even though being a criminal defense lawyer and winning an acquittal, for example, for someone that deserves it would be perhaps the most rewarding thing I could think of as a lawyer. For me personally, it was. But the day in and day out is tough, you know what I mean? And so I my day in and day out is awesome. I come to work and I fight institutional assholes for basically doing shit they shouldn't do, and so I can feel pretty good about myself that I get to choose the battle that I'm fighting. And I don't pick the battle unless I want to fight it. And so, like, I never really got in fights as a kid. I always had friends bigger than me that would protect me, and I kind of have a big mouth, as you can tell, but like being a lawyer and doing what I do allows me to basically be the fighter that I never was on a stage that I get to pick my fights and hopefully win them, and then feel good about winning them when I win.

William Reid 00:05:04 Like, it all winds up, and I don't think many lawyers can really like, you know, say it that way in in a way that they're excited about it. You know what I mean? Like, a lot of people are just chasing the buck instead of chasing what their real passion is.

Tyson Mutrux 00:05:20 Yeah, I completely feel that. So our mission, whenever it comes to our firm, is part of our mission, is leveling the playing field. That's actually in our mission about leveling the playing field, because there's a lot of people that don't have that access to justice. And it's really interesting. There's a couple of things that you mentioned. I used to do criminal defense, and I saw I saw a post about big law. So I'm going to tie those two topics together because I saw it this morning. I took a screenshot. I pulled up my phone as you were talking because, I took a screenshot of it because it kind of pissed me off whenever I read it. but when you just said it, it pissed me off even more because I think criminal defense attorneys, they're so underpaid.

Tyson Mutrux 00:05:57 Part of it is it's part of it's the market because of the ability to pay. Part of it is a lot of attorneys that are that are really undercutting the competition by charging $500 for a felony. Things like that. That's a big part of it. But I do think they're underpaid. But here's this post. And this guy says big law partner rates are between 1000 and $2000 per hour. I want to make a I want to make one point. No one is paying these rates because they are fools. They are paying these rates because they know something many don't realize. A good lawyer makes you more money than you pay them. And what pissed me off is like, there was this big law asshole, you know, that that was saying it. And so he's he's kind of tooting the horn of big law. But there's a lot of amazing attorneys out there that are on the front lines doing criminal defense that aren't making those $1,200 rates, and they're living a really hard life. It's it is a it's a massive grind.

Tyson Mutrux 00:06:49 You're talking about that case you did. the the the pro se one there. I mean, there are a lot of, lot of great criminal defense attorneys out there that just aren't making a lot of money. And it sucks. It really does suck.

William Reid 00:07:00 Part of its economics, though, right? Tyson. So if you think about it, like what analog is there to the public defender's office in civil law? In other words, like like I, I had a like I go hunting every year in Idaho and my elk God's daughter got some criminal stuff. It's over now. and she had a public defender and she and they were like, well, this person's free. They have to stink. And I'm like, well, I'm not so sure about that. Let's meet them. we met the public defender. Dude was a solid guy. And in Idaho he like, had his own private practice, but he took, like, court appointments, I guess. And so when the court will provide you a very well qualified lawyer, it's kind of there's a limit to how much even the best private practitioner can charge when the alternative is free, right? So in civil law, there really isn't that kind of component.

William Reid 00:07:47 But there are contingency fee lawyers. But the problem is that a lot of civil disputes don't justify a contingency fee in today's day and age of expensive litigation. And by the way, you're 1000 to 2000 is way off. There are now big law partners charging in excess of $3,000 an hour. It's like as high as 3500 I've seen.

Tyson Mutrux 00:08:09 What do you think with AI? Because I actually wait. I was like, I want to think about this before I really kind of processes. I wonder, okay, is AI. I can see it two different ways. AI is going to bring all those rates drastically down or what it might do. It might eliminate all the need of the lower level attorneys if we consider them that. I don't really consider them that, but let's just the ones that charge lower rates, it could eliminate the need for those, because you have more people than have access to justice because they can look up their legal issues. AI can do it, yada yada yada. And then it might drive those rates up even more than the 3000 to $4000 range, because those are the only people doing those.

Tyson Mutrux 00:08:47 I wonder what your thoughts are. Do you think AI is going to drive those rates down? Drive. Drive them up or what are your thoughts?

William Reid 00:08:53 Well, we haven't even talked about this yet. But as you know, I wrote a book that got published two months ago called Fighting Bullies The Case for a career as a Plaintiff's Lawyer. In the book, I have an entire chapter devoted to what does the future look like with AI? And I have a lot of friends in law. I mean, I sue Big law. I have a national like, you know, practice suing law firms, but I also have a lot of friends in big law and otherwise. And so I have a lot of thoughts on this. We could spend hours on it, but I would say that ultimately I think you're right. AI is going to force efficiency on all lawyers. I think that there will be winners. I think my firm of 40 or 42 lawyers will be a huge winner, because we're a success fee firm, and basically the ability to do even more work with fewer people, be more efficient, benefits.

William Reid 00:09:45 The lawyer not working for the hourly fee. But now imagine you're the quote unquote corner office partner at a big law firm. Or really any firm charging hourly rates doesn't have to be a big firm. And you realize that instead of dealing with however many salaries and complaints and, you know, the more employees you have, the more miserable any job is. Right. So, so the bottom line is you got all these employees and they're kind of in you're working this, what I call pyramid game, of kind of the hourly fee billing model. And you realize, well, wait a minute, I don't really need ten people billing on this case to make millions of dollars. All I need is a client willing to pay me. So the moment that that client is willing to consider some sort of, like, subscription, flat fee, whatever, maybe based on past experience, the moment that corner office partner can figure out a way to convert their revenue stream from the hourly fee model is the moment that then, hourly fee lawyers become like every other business in the world where actually managing your expense makes you more profitable.

William Reid 00:10:51 Which that's the kind of like, almost ridiculous nature of most law firms today that operate on the hourly fee model. Inefficiency and bloated expense are profitable components to hourly fee law firms, and so every other business in the history of mankind has basically operated on. Managing your expense increases your profitability, not not the hourly fee model, and certainly not big law. So I think you're right. Where we end up in, call it three to 5 to 7 years is those corner office partners with the clients will convert their revenue machine to, hey, man, we we you know, you paid me $12 million for a case like this in the past on average. How about you just pro rate that $12 million over three years and pay me whatever 250 a month or whatever the number is. And then once that's locked, now I can fire eight of my associates and use AI and make more money. That's the key. That's the moment that corner office partner figures out how to make more money is the moment the hourly fee model gets disbanded.

William Reid 00:11:56 Because remember, hourly fees weren't adopted in some client friendly. it was because dentists charged hourly fees back in the 40s, and the ABA started recommending that lawyers do so to y to increase revenue.

Tyson Mutrux 00:12:13 Okay. So let's let's kind of play this out a step further then. Do you think we're going to see a degradation in in the quality of services. Or do you think that's going to. Do you think the quality is going to increase.

William Reid 00:12:25 Well I don't know about increase, but I think that the you know, I'm using AI in my everyday practice now as an efficiency model, I think that the the mistakes or the traps for the at least under the current versions of AI is overreliance on it, but I think that it will certainly not result in lower quality legal service. You could argue that for perhaps the underprivileged, as this becomes more and more pervasive, that access to justice will be increased. Right. Like, you know, when you could do a ChatGPT search on ChatGPT eight and get the advice equivalent to any lawyer? That's going to be a pretty powerful tool.

William Reid 00:13:02 but I so I don't think that the quality goes down. I think it just changes the revenue model, which changes the need for manpower. And then we can get into we graduate over 40,000 lawyers a year. We have historically high application rates to law school. I mean, the early 2000 were higher at their peak, but we're like very close or getting close to that now. And my question is, what are all these lawyers going to do with their law degrees in two, three, four years? I honestly don't think they're going to be as many jobs.

Tyson Mutrux 00:13:33 All right. So let me ask you this question. This is a question that was presented to me, about a year ago. And I want to I want to ask you what what how you would answer it if you were going to do it again. Let's say you were you were younger. You were you had the opportunity to go to law school today. I think I know your answer based on what you just said, but would you do it again?

William Reid 00:13:53 100%? I love what I do.

Tyson Mutrux 00:13:57 Okay, well, but what if you don't have a job? I mean, do you think you would have a job, though, if you were to graduate law school tomorrow?

William Reid 00:14:07 I think I would, but. So this is the message that I'm giving young lawyers. This is the message in my book, which is that if you chase salary to the exclusion of experience, you're walking yourself into a dead end, right? But if you do what I did as a young lawyer, which I consistently chose lower salary to get more experience throughout my early career. And that's my recommendation to lawyers today, because the one thing AI isn't going to replace our trial lawyers. So if you and I literally tell people every day, like, I know you think being a local Da or a local public defender or even working for your local insurance defense firm and getting into court is like beneath you and quote unquote, sophisticated lawyers from elite law schools shouldn't do that. I'm telling you, for all the right reasons. You that's precisely what you should do.

William Reid 00:14:58 And going to big law because you think it's enhancing your resume or, you know, doing whatever you think will make you look good in the future at the expense of experience is a huge mistake. And and the problem is that law professors, again, all my book, all part of my speech have on average 3.7 years of private practice experience at the tenured faculty at the top 26 law schools. That's a stat that I have in my book. And so when you start thinking about, well, law professors are the people that are interacting with our young students and advising them, and then don't even get me started on career development people because they're even less qualified. But I mean, like, think about it, they're just failed lawyers. Like, nobody goes to law school to be a career development officer. So these are the people advising young law students, particularly people like me. And I don't know about you, but like, I didn't have lawyers in my family, like I was the first lawyer in my family.

William Reid 00:15:51 So it's not like I could go to my uncle or my dad and say, hey, man, how do I think about this stuff? I had to figure it out for myself. And so I think the answer to your question is I would go to law school today. I know I was in a jury trial in South Carolina two weeks ago, and I before the trial started, I'm like, I'm 58. I'm like, I'm too goddamn old for this shit. What the fuck am I doing this for? And then I get into court and I start examining the witness. I'm like, all right, I remember this is fucking awesome, I love it. And I made my closing argument and it was like, like, I still get fired up doing it. So I know this was what I was meant to do. But experience has got to be the key.

Tyson Mutrux 00:16:29 I definitely didn't have any lawyers in my family. My parents didn't even graduate from high school. My dad went back and got his GED when he was like in his 30s.

Tyson Mutrux 00:16:35 So yeah, not. Not even not even close. you know, but I do think there's a future for lawyers. I think that the firms that win, they're the ones that they they they focus heavily on AI. And instead of replacing you, you're talking about the, the big law firms that, you know, they'll go and axe the eight associates once they've, you know, streamlined everything with AI. I think that that's a losing model. I think that you instead you, you you push your resources. So you use the AI to, to make things more efficient. But then you push those people into more customer service related roles where they're there to take care of the client. And it's the more the human interaction. So you, you increase the human interaction part of it. And I think those are the firms that are going to win. Now I do I also do think that there's going to be a pretty, pretty big reduction in the overall workforce. So I don't think that I'm not naive to think that it's not going to happen.

Tyson Mutrux 00:17:27 I do think in the next 5 to 10 years it's definitely going to happen, but I think that the ones that winter are going to be the ones that capitalize on AI, and then the human element of things, focusing more on the human element, only the things that humans can do. I think that that's going to be really important. Which leads me to the next thing I want to ask you about, because you you're really wanting to take that next leap and fully integrate AI. So I wonder where you're seeing the most return on investment with AI right now?

William Reid 00:17:54 Well, I actually used AI to help me write my book, and nothing in my book is like what I would consider to be like final output from AI. But the the iterative process of taking. Like even in my jury trial that I had two weeks ago, I took my closing argument. I kind of read the outline of it into my AI machine and got feedback from it, and I got some really good snippets out of it that I ended up using.

William Reid 00:18:21 But it's really just a very helpful, I think, time saving device that that helps you refine whatever you do, whether it's writing or making an argument or even coming up with a theme for a lawsuit. So I think it's really helpful right now. The way I use it right now is to help me be more efficient and think better. but I don't know what it's going to be like in the future, but I know one thing it will never do is replace a trailer. Like, no one's going to send a computer to court to talk to a jury, right? Like, I don't think that can happen. And if it does, I think we're all in trouble, because, yeah.

Tyson Mutrux 00:18:56 I agree with that. I think that there's definitely going to be there's going to be walls set up around that. They're going to put up nice big walls around the courthouses, and it's going to be hard for AI to penetrate. I but I will say, I mean, my my trial prep time has been reduced substantially by, by my ability to use AI to help me prepare for things, just as, I mean, if we just use like notebook LLM as an example for like preparing for like a mediation or something like I'll, I'll plug in everything in a notebook, LLM, have a do a podcast recording for me so I can listen to it just to, just to refresh my, my memory about certain things.

Tyson Mutrux 00:19:27 So I think just little tools like that are just going to really make us stronger as a profession. I think that that's it's can be really, really helpful. The I do want to ask you about, exposing things about the profession. And I you've seen multiple generations of lawyers you've spoken to, I'm guessing probably hundreds or thousands of lawyers at this point, or law students. And I wonder what you think AI might expose about the profession, either in a good way or a bad way.

William Reid 00:19:57 You have to give me more help here. What are we talking about? Exposed in the profession?

Tyson Mutrux 00:20:01 Yeah. Is there, is there anything when it comes to like. One thing you mentioned was, like, the billable hour. It's kind of exposed there. There might be a weakness when it comes to the strength of the billable hour, because it's. And it's that thing is prevailed for decades at this point. And the AI is probably going to expose that. It's going to force these, these big law firms into a different model.

Tyson Mutrux 00:20:23 Right. So I wonder if there's anything else when it comes to lawyers in general, whether it's their ability to write. Is it? I mean, is there anything that you that you've seen any sort of trends or common ribbons that you think that AI is either it maybe it's replacing or maybe things that it is. It's showing that lawyers as a profession have a weakness where and it could be. Another thing to think about too, is we when you're, you're talking about, you know, money coming in from outside the legal space and in places like Utah and Arizona, where these alternative business models. So I just wonder if there's anything, anything like that where AI may have exposed.

William Reid 00:21:03 Well, I mean, I think that we could talk about the billable hour forever. I think the billable hours sucks. so if you're using the word expose in a way that maybe, is giving me a little bit of a curveball, but I would say in terms of what we've already talked about, the the human interaction that we as lawyers have to have with our clients is not getting replaced.

William Reid 00:21:25 So the people that are skilled at that I think gain. in, in this system. Right. And like you've heard, I'm sure you've heard because I have partners down the hall. They're all the resume snobs. I went to Saint John's, which I affectionately referred to as the Harvard or Queens. and so all the people down the hall, they have all these fancy resumes, and I can only talk to some people and they'll tell me, oh, you know, we write well and we can research better, and our brains are bigger. And I don't give a fuck about any of that because, like, at the end of the day, that isn't going to win you a case, right? And and I don't even really think clients give a shit about that. It's lawyers who suck, who basically accomplished nothing in their careers. They're the ones telling you where they went to school and how they were on law review and all the bullshit. That doesn't really fucking matter. And so I went to Saint John's, and I run a law firm of people that would literally take my resume and throw it in the trash.

William Reid 00:22:17 Okay. So like, it's like, that's just the way it works. I think AI will even that out. In other words, like when you say, I've got five Stanford graduates down the hall and they can research, you know, the like, circles around you and write these briefs. Well, what happens when ChatGPT 11 can write a better brief than all six of them in five minutes? Right. Like so. Like that's the future we're headed to.

Tyson Mutrux 00:22:40 I think that that you just answered that perfectly. I think that's a great example of of what I'm talking about is there's there's certain things. And part of the reason why I want to ask that question is because there are certain things that are going to get replaced that people right now just are not seeing. They're not there. They think that they are going to be better because they're human. But you may be an excellent writer right now, but whenever ChatGPT eight, like you said, comes out, it is going to be able to write better than any human lawyer ever in existence.

Tyson Mutrux 00:23:13 It's it's going to be able to do that at some point. It's not there yet. I will say that, but it's it's a better writer than many attorneys at this point. But I think that you answered that perfectly. I think that that's a great answer as to to something that, you know, people need to.

William Reid 00:23:29 Know what I worry about, though. So, like, I don't know if you would subscribe to this, but I am not the best writer around here. They all tell me I can't write and all I'm allowed to do is edit. And I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever. but it is the process of writing, right? Like, I don't know if you remember, back in law school outlines, somebody stole my outline, my my second year of law school because I had like good grades or whatever. And all my, all my study parties were like, oh, man, this is terrible. They stole your outline. They're gonna I'm like, it's the process of making the outline.

William Reid 00:23:57 That was the benefit. It's not the output. It's like it's creating it. And so here's my worry, right when we get to that point in the future where ChatGPT or whatever AI engine Gemini or who knows, can do what we just talked about, what's going to get lost is the process that led to creating that brief, because you can write the best brief in the world and then who knows, maybe some AI, judicial tool will review it in our hypothetical future. But when you go to argue that, I think something can get lost if you are not part of the person or part of the team that created the output, and the output can just be created for you. And now you're the advocate and you have to get up there. And so now I guess in this world we say, okay, chat, give me my outline for this, you know, talk. If you're not thinking about it iteratively and going through the process of writing the brief and editing it and reading the cases and getting to the point where now you're comfortable with what the argument should be and you've written it, I think that it's going to take some effort from the advocates of the future to get to the same spot that you naturally must get to you now in order to write that brief, if that makes sense.

Tyson Mutrux 00:25:09 I'm with you. It does make sense because and I don't at this point, I don't know how to do it any other way than the because when I was talking about it, shortening the time it takes me for for me to prep for a trial. I still have to force myself to go through that iterative process that I always did before. Like, I will find myself. I'll have it. I'll have it, you know? Hey, you know, create an outline for me for maybe it's a direct examination and I won't use that direct examination at all. I'll go. I'll end up going back and writing it, hand-writing it myself. And because it's one of those things, it's. You're exactly right. Like, I'll have no idea what it's talking about. Sometimes I'll be like, where are you going with this? Like, I won't have an idea as to like what the strategy is, what the line of questioning. So I'll have to go back and force myself to do it. So my struggle is I can't conceptualize what it looks like on the other side of all of this.

William Reid 00:25:57 Well, but I don't think it's that hard, right? So if you think ChatGPT was three was a pile of shit, right? Like, if you used it, you're like, this sucks. This is never replacing anything. Then you get to four and you're like, Holy shit. It's like way better right now we're on like 4.1 or whatever we're on and five.

Tyson Mutrux 00:26:13 We're on five now.

William Reid 00:26:14 Yeah, five. There you go. So like this, this path it's going on is like, pretty impressive, if you ask me now. I don't think it ever gets like, I don't think that AI can do what I do, I just don't. I have 25 years of wisdom. I know a lot of things that you cannot find on the internet. I teach a class at UT law school that I created with materials that don't live in a textbook and aren't really like I do a lot of things that are quote unquote under the radar, but that I'm not dumb enough to think that at some point in the future, AI won't be able to do everything I do.

William Reid 00:26:48 And by the way, in case you don't know this or your listeners, don't, all these AI models, they're giving you the AI for free so they can steal your data. So the more of your sensitive information and thoughts that you're putting into, I don't give a shit if there's some box. They say they're not going to train on it or whatever. Bullshit. They're all fucking lying, okay? They're taking your shit and learning from it. So I'm really careful about what I put into AI. Like, there's some of my tricks that I will not put into AI and eventually it's going to catch up to me, but I'm just going to delay the inevitable. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux 00:27:21 Let's shift gears a little bit. We talked enough about AI, so I want to shift gears a little bit about, a little bit about your career and when do you. Because it's my understanding that you started read columns was zero. and when did you feel when did you feel like you actually finally had some success?

William Reid 00:27:39 Well, so I've been doing this for about ten.

William Reid 00:27:42 I left the government in 2000, and I was at my former firm until like the fall of 2009. So just like nine and a half years. And so I did exactly what I'm doing now at another firm. I just didn't really like their business model and the way they ran things. and so I kind of got forced out because I wouldn't sign on to a line of credit and whatever. So I started my firm with no clients, no guarantees. Other than that I'd been kind of doing it for a number of years. And the way I kind of acknowledged I was like fishing. And I go out fishing and I catch a like an old boot, a crab with three legs and a half eaten fish and I was able to survive, right. So I'm like, okay, well, I could survive on this shit. So. And meanwhile, like, I live in Austin, Texas, and I do financial litigation. Well, I'm here to tell you, there's no fucking financial litigation in Austin, Texas.

William Reid 00:28:27 Really? You've got to go somewhere else, to to do what I do. But there's such demand for what I do that I can literally, I can live in Alaska and do what I do. Like, I might have to travel once in a while. but, you know, the the bottom line is, if you are the the an hourly fee lawyer and you're now in competition and you're, you're let's just say defense lawyer and you're like, yeah, my billing rate's like 1850 an hour. And I went to Harvard, and your billing rate's $2,000 an hour. And you went to Stanford. Like you can see that's all the same shit, right? Like, there's not really any. But if you say, hey, man, I'm like, one of the few lawyers in the country, it's too, like an Amazon 100 law firm. I'll do it on a contingency fee if I like your case. And I'll take the risk with you and I'll partner with you. Well, there's like only a few people in the country that can say that or would be willing to do that.

William Reid 00:29:17 Once you establish your name, you've got effectively a monopoly, which is what I have. And that's not the only niche monopoly I have. But I got fortunate and I fell into this out of luck. Okay, so that's my speech to law students. Like, I got lucky and found what I love doing. Now, how does this next generation of lawyers find that? I don't know, but I my example that I like is there's a woman named Ellen. Ellen went to Harvard. She was on the Harvard Plaintiff's Law Association, which is kind of like an unbelievable group of student run deals at law schools across the country. Anyway, she tells me like two years ago, I want to be a data privacy lawyer. And I'm like, that sounds fucking boring. Why would you want to do that? And then I read in the paper the other day, or Law360 or whatever, Google just paid $380 million because they're basically stealing your information, even though they said it was like private. Right? And I'm like, that sounds pretty cool, right? So I don't know, man.

William Reid 00:30:13 Like, I don't know what the next thing like Elon's thing is, but I think this next generation of lawyers needs to think, where is the legal profession going? Where is the need going to be? But most importantly, what would make them excited to be lawyers to do right? Like, I don't I don't know. I don't have the answers to all those questions, but I think those are the sorts of questions that would lead a young lawyer to a rewarding career. So back to your question. I got lucky is the short answer.

Tyson Mutrux 00:30:40 So you say you got lucky when you went to law school. Did you know? Did you have any idea what you wanted to do?

William Reid 00:30:46 No, because law school didn't prepare me. That's why I wrote my book. Right. So, like, the problem in law school is that. And I don't know if you know this, but do you know that on campus interviews now start literally the first semester of a law student's first year? Did you not know that?

Tyson Mutrux 00:31:03 No.

William Reid 00:31:03 So my books are already out of date. So when I went to law school, I was like, oh, you know, an OCI because I'm old was like, in the fall of your second year, you interviewed for your two L summer job, which for most people is their starting job, right? and that process moved to kind of after first year finals over the course of the last like decade or more. It is now there are coffees throughout your first year. Open applications begin November of your fall. I'm talking about at the elite law schools. I don't know about all law schools. And then literally the interview process takes place no later than January. February of law students first year. and then they're forced to decide on what are being called jumbo offers, where you can commit to your one and two all summer. But you must commit to both, and it's exclusive. In other words, you can't go to two firms and then they're they're exploding offers. So you have like, like a week or ten days to decide on all this at a time where these law students don't know anything.

William Reid 00:32:05 But I don't think it's any different than when I went to law school where none of my teachers said, you know, you could choose to be a plaintiff's lawyer, or you could choose to be a defense lawyer. What would that look like? Like, literally no one even framed it that way. So that's part of the reason I wrote my book, because I want law students to think about their careers in a more thoughtful way and say, what is it that I really want to do? And how then how do I connect the dots to actually doing what it is I want to do instead of, I think this is this is where we're at today. These big law firms offer 225 grand a year. It's more than we pay our federal judges, more than we pay any judge in this country other than maybe the chief justice, Supreme Court out of straight out of law school. Why are we just letting students take those jobs without giving them information? Well, you can go take that job. It is very unlikely you'll get very much experience.

William Reid 00:33:00 You'll be 2 to 3 years down the line. And now it's going to be call it 2030, 2031 for you that are currently in law school. And if you take that big law job, what is going? What is the legal profession going to look like in 5 to 7 years, and where are you going to fit in it? If you have no experience because you went to big law. So like no one told me and it's it persists today. No one is telling these students and these law schools are allowing this process to move earlier and earlier and earlier. I think I think it's it's predatory. It's what I think it's terrible.

Tyson Mutrux 00:33:39 That.

William Reid 00:33:40 I've been trying to be an evangelist on this, online and elsewhere. I don't know if you've seen.

Tyson Mutrux 00:33:44 But I can tell. But I like it. I like the fight. The. I do wonder, then, given what you just said, do you think people should get a job at a law school or do you? This is more for people that want to start their own firm.

Tyson Mutrux 00:33:57 Do you think it's important to have some experience and go get a job somewhere? Not maybe not big law, but somewhere prior to opening their firm, or do you think that someone could open their firm straight out of law school in whatever practice area that they want?

William Reid 00:34:14 I think it's going to be really hard for well, it really I guess it all depends, right? If you want to be a criminal defense lawyer, that's probably something in a lot of places where you might even be able to accomplish that straight out of law school, only because I think there's enough demand. And then it comes down to economics. You'd have to probably charge some below market rate to get your experience. I don't know that that's the ideal path to do what I do, or to eventually do what I do, which is like kind of complex civil stuff. I don't know that I would advise that because candidly, like again, back, I keep mentioning my book, but if you go back to the 19th century, all lawyers were trained according to the apprentice method, right? That's that's how Abraham Lincoln learned.

William Reid 00:34:57 He went, practiced with another lawyer, got a sea legs, and then took the bar. Right. And so in the 1870s, these two idiots from Harvard and Yale, the deans, got together and they're like, yeah. So this apprentice approached it. That's like, that's a low brow way to do this. We're going to do this the Ivy League way, and we're going to academically train our lawyers, which is basically the system we have today. And it is entirely theoretical, entirely academic, and it's totally impractical, and it's taught by people that literally didn't live in the real world. And so when you then say, okay, that's the method by which you're going to train as a lawyer, and now you're going to go out on your own and try and do it without having been under someone else's wing. I think that's like a very tall order. Can I exclude the possibility that, like, somebody could actually do it? I'm sure. And so there probably have been people that have done it.

William Reid 00:35:46 I don't think it's the ideal way to do it. You've got to learn from someone.

Tyson Mutrux 00:35:51 Yeah I.

William Reid 00:35:51 Agree. That's the way this works, right?

Tyson Mutrux 00:35:53 I agree with you. I didn't know that about the history of that. And it's interesting to me because the the medical profession they still use, they still do apprenticeship, they don't call it that, but they still do that whenever it comes to their their medical training. It makes no sense why. And I there are some states I think I'm going to probably get this wrong. I think New Hampshire is one of them. Where they have you can become a lawyer through some sort of apprenticeship program. There's some state that does it that you can do it that way. So I think it's it seems to me that the law schools are placing more value on the experience part of things. A lot of people have been advocating shortening the amount of years for law school and then adding some sort of apprenticeship, component, which I would be completely fine with.

Tyson Mutrux 00:36:34 I think that would be that would be pretty effective.

William Reid 00:36:36 I think you're right. I think two years is more than enough for academics. I also think you're right that medical school does it way better, because not only does medical school force what you're talking about, but you've got to choose 4 or 6 month rotations in medical school. So you have to do like surgery and, you know, dermatology and emergency room or whatever, but you at least are forced to choose four things. Let's compare that to this jumbo bullshit that law schools are letting happen every day, starting in your first year of law school. By definition, you don't have four. You have one and only one. And so that's going to be your job offer. And if you don't take that job offer and you're now like, see the light and you're a third year law student, you're out interviewing your damaged goods, you're the person who doesn't have a date, and tonight's the prom. And you're just going to have to take any suitor you can get.

William Reid 00:37:23 Like, that's the way it works. And it's unfortunate.

Tyson Mutrux 00:37:26 No. So let's change gears a little bit again. And it seems like you've got some hobbies. I think hobbies are really, really important. How do you how do you structure your time so that you can take time off to go do things like spend time with your family or go elk hunting, things like that.

William Reid 00:37:42 So I'm like the luckiest lawyer in America, right? Like, I don't make the most money in America, but I have really good life balance. So, I mean, honestly, if any given day I want to go play golf with my buddies or if I want to go hunting for three days, I mean, with the smartphone, you can get away with a lot, but like, you can't get away with everything. But if you have a good team and there's a court hearing or, you know, a client meeting or whatever, something that has to happen, having a good team and the ability to say, hey man, you mind handling this or that? That makes everything easier.

William Reid 00:38:13 But for me, I'm very kind of like, I'm old now. So this, this whole middle part that, that I don't really enjoy the practice of law, you know, this thing you call discovery? I don't really like participating in discovery. And frankly, I think depositions are overrated. But I love meeting clients, understanding their puzzle, their problem, figuring out a plan to solve it. And then I get my team to go solve the puzzle until we get to some end game, like a mediation or a trial or what have you. And so I love trials still, but this whole process in the middle that, frankly, is largely a waste of time. Like, have you ever seen anyone read an interrogatory to a jury, like, or have you ever like, it's like it's a fucking waste of time. And yet all these hourly lawyers besiege you with all this nonsense so they can bill. They're not trial lawyers. They're just wasting everyone's time. And so I'm fortunate that I have an amazing team.

William Reid 00:39:08 They deal with all that stuff in the middle that, frankly, I'd probably kill someone if I had to do so. That's how I do it.

Tyson Mutrux 00:39:15 All right, you say you're lucky, you say you're fortunate. I think that, yeah, I think that that's there's definitely a bit of luck. There's definitely a, you know, a bitch a bit. I mean, you're, you're you're definitely you've got a lot of gratitude, which is fantastic. But you, you are a big part of building that team. So can you give us some advice on building a good team.

William Reid 00:39:34 Comes down to culture and people. And so, like I said, the resume snobs down the hall, they tell me who I'm allowed to talk to. And I like to ask people questions like, just tell me about yourself, right? And the person that says, well, you know, I went to this in that school and I majored in this, and I got that grade. And then I went and did like, I'm like, get the fuck out of here.

William Reid 00:39:53 I'm like like, so I'm like, I want to know, like, tell me about yourself. So if somebody says, man, you know, I grew up in Maryland, I played lacrosse when I was a kid. But, you know, the bottom line is the East Coast wasn't really for me. So kind of moved across the country. And now I'm like, kind of living in the South and. All right, you're telling me about yourself, like, okay, we're good here. So the other thing we do, which I'm actually really proud of because I don't know any other law firm that does this, is if you get far enough in our interview process, we make you do a mock oral argument and we act as judges and every it's like it's part rite of passage. and so but at the end of the day, we make everybody do what we all do as lawyers. Now, am I looking for the next F Lee Bailey or whatever? No, I'm not Johnnie Cochran.

William Reid 00:40:37 No, I'm not looking for that. But I want to see that you're passionate about this and that you're putting some effort into it and that you really want this in some way. Look, if you get nervous and you kind of get a little tongue tied, I expect that as a young lawyer. But what I want to make sure and we give like a, like a amount of like, let's just say canned materials. And then you could certainly go out of those materials. Right? So if somebody's sitting there and they only read the three cases we sent them and don't really like, try and go a little further. That tells me a lot about them, right? So I would say that, and I'm almost certain every generation has said this about the generation behind them, but this generation needs to show me that they have grit and determination, however they can show that to me. And so this is one of the avenues that I can kind of peel back a little bit of the the onion and see, like, what are we looking at here? But I want to see grit.

William Reid 00:41:29 I want to see determination. I want to see some sort of hey, man, I'm not just looking to make a buck here. I want to do this and I want to be good at it. And I don't know how to quantify that for you. Right? Like this. It's just you have to judge it. And look, I'm not perfect at this. Like, there are people that I've chosen that I thought would be fucking stars. That turned out to be duds. And there were other people that I thought, oh man, this person, like, I made a mistake. And then all of a sudden they turn into like an amazing lawyer. So like, I don't have any crystal ball like, but I try to make it about the person in the culture.

Tyson Mutrux 00:42:03 Do you use anything like personality tests to try to to figure out who the right fit might be?

William Reid 00:42:08 So by goddaughter actually does this for a living like she does this person. It's like like not Briggs and Stratton, but it's kind of like that.

William Reid 00:42:15 Yeah. And she did. So she modeled like lawyers in general, which, by the way, most lawyers are pretty risk averse. And I'm a contingency fee lawyer. So basically the the modeling of my group shows that we are as a group, all 40 of us like extremely willing to take on or more willing to take on risk than an average lawyer. Right. But that kind of intuitively makes sense to me. so yes, we use it, but I think that it's it's just a tool. It's like kind of like shadow juries and stuff in trial. You can use it, but it's not like anything I would base a decision on unilaterally. Right. It's just a data point.

Tyson Mutrux 00:42:52 Gotcha. We're the same way we use. We use Colby. Cause I don't have. I don't have someone that is so close to me that I can rely on. That would be really nice. we've we use we use a service called tally. They were pretty good two years ago, but we use now.

Tyson Mutrux 00:43:05 We use Colby, and it's. We use it pretty pretty pretty good.

William Reid 00:43:07 So have you found it to be accurate? In other words, like whatever criterion you're looking for? Well, I guess what what is the what are the main criteria or factors you're looking for.

Tyson Mutrux 00:43:17 So okay so our baseline the answer your first question. Yes. We find it really reliable. We actually we've got a there's a certain number for our case managers that we really like. It's that fits pretty really really really well. It's very very accurate. Not 100% but very accurate. But we're actually we're talking about passion. All that baseline for every employee. We're looking for what we call peeps. So people have passion for what we do. People that have energy. So you know like when you walk into a room, they kind of fill the room with energy. So that and they so they have the ability to energize other people, people that can execute and then people have edge. So execute means like they can make a freaking decision on something.

Tyson Mutrux 00:43:54 So it's a tough decision and they can execute on it. So we're looking for those things. And so that's kind of baseline. We have a series of interview questions. We put people through a series of 3 to 4 interviews. And all of the questions are targeted towards that. They all have a certain purpose. We have we put them through an assessment, for for a variety of questions, a variety of topics that we have to deal with. But, but so yeah, we're looking at baseline like every employee. We're looking for people. That's what we're looking for. And we call our people peeps. So it works out pretty well.

William Reid 00:44:23 I like it. All right. Well it's not too dissimilar, right.

Tyson Mutrux 00:44:26 Yeah. When you said it's I think it's I think we're probably fairly close on what we're looking for when it comes to our people. Because the big part, if you can't get past the first passion, right, that's the most important thing, is having make sure you have that passion, because if you don't, it doesn't matter if you have the energy and all the other stuff, if you don't like what we're doing.

Tyson Mutrux 00:44:46 Like, have you ever made a mistake of hiring and maybe you had a you've hired a former insurance defense lawyer that worked out for you, but have you ever worked out or hired one that just can't get out of that that defense mindset, if you've ever done that before.

William Reid 00:45:00 So I've never hired an insurance defense.

Multiple Speakers 00:45:04 So I made that mistake.

William Reid 00:45:06 Look, they kind of I like I would think that the person you're talking about would be the same person that would never apply to work at a place firm.

Tyson Mutrux 00:45:14 You would. It's funny how many weeks there are. I it's kind of odd the number of people that apply to our firm that have current cases on the other side right now with us, and we're like, what a weird thing to do, that you've got a current case on the other side with us and you apply. But anyways, we did make that mistake.

William Reid 00:45:33 A compliment, though. If someone's willing to leave your former adversary.

Tyson Mutrux 00:45:36 It really is. It really is. But it's funny because like, they just many of them can't they can't turn that off.

Tyson Mutrux 00:45:42 And so if you don't have a passion for what we do, if you are, if you're clearly just a defense attorney, then there's no point in really hiring. The energy doesn't matter. Your energy is for the wrong thing. So, really, really important. Okay, so how do you. A couple more questions for you. The last one's about about culture. or this one's about culture I like how do you maintain that culture? Like like because that is not something that you just said it and forget it. So how do you maintain that culture?

William Reid 00:46:12 Well, I tried to create the law firm that I wanted to work out years ago with the people that founded this place for me. and over time, we've kind of cultivated that. But. So a couple of things. One is if you get the right people and they enjoy one another's company, then culture becomes a lot easier to start with. So we at least start there. secondly, we we do a lot of things to build our culture.

William Reid 00:46:38 So I don't know how you compensate your people, but our philosophy is very much a team collaborative approach. So a lot of firms I know have what you call eat what you killed, system where like if you're kind of present to win which I've always felt is a little bit unfair, right. Because if you're a young lawyer and I stick you on a dog case, I don't know, it's a dog case. I'm sticking you on a case. I think it's good, but it turns out to be a dog, and you work your butt off and doesn't work out. Why should you be penalized for the decision I made for you? Right? Like you didn't make the decision. And, like, alternatively, let's say I got a similar, case in terms of its prospects. Give it to the person literally next door to you. And that case succeeds and it's a bonanza and you get a bonus. What do you think the relationship is between those two lawyers going forward? There's going to be like resentment that doesn't create collaboration.

William Reid 00:47:31 And then you also have associates saying, oh, well, that partner tends to win more than that partner. So I'm not I'm going to say I'm busy when that partner calls me blah blah blah blah blah. Right. Right. Or whatever perverse incentives you can come up with. So, as far as comp goes, when we get a big hit and we have no debt, we've never had any debt because I still have PTSD from my former firm that lived on debt. and we get, you know, more than $1 million in our operating account and we're going to pay a bonus. Every single person in the firm, staff, associates, partners all get a bonus the same time. And the reason we do that is to foster this collaboration and this teamwork. Hey, we're all on the same team. So it's very common to see lawyers that are aren't on a case at our firm in someone else's office talking about a case and like working on it together, trying to solve the problem because we're all one team, but it doesn't.

William Reid 00:48:26 It's not just a comp thing, right? So I just went to this trial in South Carolina, got $112 million jury verdict, which is pretty fucking awesome, right?

Multiple Speakers 00:48:34 Yeah. Hell yeah.

William Reid 00:48:35 The coolest part of it is this is the coolest part. And I'm not I mean, like, I don't know how many other firms that can say this. I'm sure there are others that could say this, but, Julia, one of my young stars is a third. Going on fourth year lawyer. She put on one witness. She crossed another, J. H. One of my stars in my New York office. Associate, fourth or fifth year, put on a witness. And then he was preparing me for a cross-examination at lunch. This is my favorite part, and it's like 1238. The witness is going on. The cross starts at one and I'm like, you sound pretty ready for this. JH and he goes, yeah, I am. I go. All right well I think you should do the cross.

William Reid 00:49:11 Let's prepare on the way to courthouse. So and it was it was like a short 10 or 15 minute cross. We went over the questions on the way to the courthouse and he fucking rocked it dude. I mean like rocked it. So when we won the case and we're all sitting there, by the way, it was like, you know, the typical deal where the envelope gets passed out. We went to the jury, retired at 5 p.m.. The judge wouldn't let him go home. She ordered him pizza, and we went across the street and ordered appetizers. And I'm on my, like, third glass of wine. Right? And so, so the team was five lawyers. Every lawyer put on a witness like we're a team. and so we're older. The appetizers, they come, we have our third or fourth glass of wine. We get the message, there's a verdict. We go back to the courthouse and like, we're all sitting there like, you know, we think things went reasonably well, but we don't know that we're going to win everything we asked for.

William Reid 00:49:59 And we're all sitting there like right next to each other and first like page, and we see the judge like kind of thumbing through it. And if if we lose, we lose on the first page. Right. So she's looking at other pages. So the tea leaves are looking good but we don't know. And then when she read off the like all the, the numbers and shit and we all looked at each other like, holy shit, we just want. But meanwhile it was so cool in terms of team building to look at the young lawyers and say, you were part of this. Like, if this isn't just you sat there and carried bags for us old bastards, you were there with us every step of the way. That's what builds teams and collaboration and culture. Right.

Multiple Speakers 00:50:38 That's right.

Tyson Mutrux 00:50:38 That's really cool. I love that, I love I love stories like that. That's just that's, gets me, gets me going, I love it. All right, last question I'll ask you is, what's the biggest financial risk you've taken in your firm? And how did it play out?

William Reid 00:50:54 That's funny.

William Reid 00:50:55 See, like like our monthly nut. When we started, this place was, like, 70 grand a month. Okay? Like 70 grand a month, which sounds like a lot, but today, it's like 1.8 million a month. Okay, so it's a little different. Right.

Multiple Speakers 00:51:10 So yeah, but to.

Tyson Mutrux 00:51:11 Start at 70 grand a month is a that's a big way to start. That's that's starting out strong. So. Wow.

William Reid 00:51:18 So we had four, equity partners and four associates to start the firm, and it was 70 grand a month to pay those four folks. And we, the equity partners, have never made any money unless the firm generates cash. Like. And I think that's kind of probably rare for a lot of law firms of any size, because, you know, the way it works, especially if you're a success fee firm and starting out like you could go a year without like a fee. You know what I mean? Like it takes a while. So you have to calibrate the risk that we took in the early days relative to like, what our overhead was versus now.

William Reid 00:51:52 Like we can afford to take more risk now. And what would seem like an impossible amount of risk today is far more manageable. Just because we have more regular like we have a docket it kind of produces, it's a little bit more reliable, let's say. but in our early days, I represented the 14 departments and the national government of Columbia in what was like at the time, like the coolest case I'd ever seen. I like, caught the tiger by the tail. So it was a multi hundred million dollar case against Diageo and Pernod Ricard for basically taking narco profits and money and laundering Colombia, the country with black market liquor. We had documents that went to like the board level. It was like insane. and this, like, money laundering expert named John, who's like a crazy but awesome guy that I knew from my prosecutor days, was the expert on it. And he walked me in and I met all the government officials in Colombia, and we spent $500,000 in out-of-pocket expense over the course of, like, call it 18 months.

William Reid 00:52:57 In those early days when our overhead was like, you know, 70 grand a month, not counting what we paid on the Colombian case and $500,000 expense today wouldn't be a whole lot for our docket. But back then it was like we were paying it ourselves. All right, so, you got to imagine that we had 800 custodians because the, the various departments which we call states here in Colombia, they actually manufacture this, this liquor. It's like garbage, like you and I wouldn't drink it. It's called aguardiente, which literally means firewater in Spanish. And, it's fucking terrible shit. It's like, worse than mouthwash. And but they had a commercial market for liquor, and our argument was selling Johnnie Walker Black for $20 in the black market, like, was depleting our, like, you know, mouthwash sales, basically. And so it was not the most logical, like, you know, argument, but it was an argument. And the reason why that was important is because foreign governments cannot access our US courts unless they're engaged in commercial activity.

William Reid 00:54:02 In other words, if you're seeking your lost tax revenue or whatever, there's this thing called the revenue rule, which basically draws the line at foreign sovereigns cannot use our courts to extend their foreign policies, but they can use our courts if they're engaged in, you know, commercial activity. And we have that here. Okay. We get 100 and I don't even remember $30 million settlement offer on the table, which is fucking pure insanity at the stage we were at in our firm back then. And I make the make the, you know, rounds and I'm talking to my crappy Spanish to these like leaders of, of Colombia. And I'm trying to build a consensus to accept the deal. And I fucking failed. Like, not just failed. Failed miserably. I think maybe 5 or 6 of the governors, were on board. The national government was like, will support it if you get, you know, a majority of governors, which I couldn't get. And so I had this like contentious meeting, with all the clients and by the way, attorney client privilege at a government meeting in Colombia where there's like, all these, like, like.

Multiple Speakers 00:55:03 It's.

William Reid 00:55:03 Ridiculous. Like there is no privilege. Okay. So anyway, I'm like, look, guys, you have 800 custodians and I've got to gather all of their emails, and many of them don't even use their government email. They use like their private email. I've sent whole letters to these people. I have no guarantee they've held anything. I don't think that I can go forward in good faith and represent you in New York federal court without basically drawing sanctioned motion after sanction motion. I can already see the writing on the wall. That's the defense that these big lawyer, big firm lawyers are going to deploy on behalf of these, companies. So, in other words, take the fucking money people. And so they're like, no, I'm not taking the money. So I had $130 million on the table, which my fee would have been fucking substantial, let's just put it that way. And so I literally walked away from it. I've said, look, I'm not going to lose my law license to represent you.

William Reid 00:55:57 I do not believe that I can weather the storm. I cannot basically babysit 800 people in another country, in another language, and have any comfort level that I can honor my obligations to the court. And so I quit. and this opportunistic lawyer from Florida who is Colombian by by nationality, speaks much better Spanish than me, thought that this was an opportunity and took the case for me. It is, 14 years later. No or so. And no fucking settlement. No nothing.

Multiple Speakers 00:56:31 The case? No way.

William Reid 00:56:33 So I, I walked away from this deal, which at the time, like, you know, you get pop committed. You know what I mean? Like, I had $500,000 in this case. Like, I don't know how much time into it. We went to Columbia over and over and over again. But here's here's the silver lining in it all. Like the biggest client that I had in the early days of this firm was so impressed by that case and how cool it sounded that he was like, well, you're one crazy fucker.

William Reid 00:56:59 So I'm going to give you like, all this cool commercial stuff, which he did give me and kind of built our firm on that client. But I actually think that what sold him was this case. So it's not like I totally lost on it, but I literally like the 500 grand up in smoke all the time. We spent for two years gone, and we had to walk away from what would have been a very lucrative settlement. And frankly, it was in the client's best interest. They just wouldn't listen to me.

Tyson Mutrux 00:57:27 So which is clear, it's evident 14 years later when it's still not resolved. So, I love it. That's that's. I just love that. That's, Well, I don't want.

Multiple Speakers 00:57:36 To be wrong. I don't.

William Reid 00:57:37 Here's the deal. I said even worse. They're called San Andreas. San Andreas is an island in Colombia. Like, basically off the coast of Peru. I mean, Aruba. And it is a tax haven. So basically, San Andrés is a tax haven like state within the Colombian country.

William Reid 00:57:54 And so they have San Andrés vetoes in every major city in Colombia, from, Cali to Medellin to Bogota. To this day, you can still buy black market Johnnie Walker Black in those black markets, with no taxes paid. And frankly, that was what the this would have solved that problem. So forget the money, okay. And and I don't know governments don't see I that was my first and last time representing a foreign government because basically governmental bodies don't. They're not rational economic actors. They think about all these things like what is the perception of this? And if I take the deal, am I like in bed with the with the alcohol companies or whatever? It's like, no, dude. Like they were going to solve your problem with you and become your partner and pay you to do it. Like, it was kind of an idiot test. They failed, so I quit.

Multiple Speakers 00:58:45 So.

Tyson Mutrux 00:58:46 I will we're going to leave it there. How do people get your book and how do they get in touch with you in case they want to reach out to you and ask you questions?

William Reid 00:58:53 Oh, well, I'd love to plug my book.

William Reid 00:58:55 It's on Amazon. It's called Fighting Bullies. And my name, my legal name is William T. Read the fourth. So if you plug that all in there, on Amazon you can find the book. And, my website is read Collins. Com so Ray I'd love it.

Tyson Mutrux 00:59:10 Thanks, Bill, for doing this. I really appreciate it. It's great talking to you. And I can't wait to, to to touch base with you again because I just it's it's fun seeing what you're doing and it's great talking to you.

William Reid 00:59:18 Well, I'd love to do it again. Tyson. Good to meet you, man.

Tyson Mutrux 00:59:20 Good to meet you, man.

Multiple Speakers 00:59:21 Appreciate it. All right. Cheers.