On today’s episode we talk with Bill Reid. Bill is many things: a larger than life Texan, a personality with a gravitational pull, a great storyteller, an adventurer, and a wildly successful lawyer. Bill is a founding member of Reid Collins & Tsai, LLP, a leading litigation boutique, who has developed a national reputation for successfully trying complex commercial and financial cases. He has tried a wide range of civil and criminal cases to verdict before judges and juries in a career that has spanned almost three decades.
On this episode we cover:
● The story of Reid Collins & Tsai LLP;
● Bill’s best moment as a lawyer (and as a dad);
● The evolution of the Reid Collins & Tsai business model;
● Bills hybrid contingency model and how tol build one;
● Bill’s advice to young lawyers;
● Reid Collins economic model;
● Aligning economic interests between a client and a law firm
● The decision to keep Reid Collins & Tsai at its current size;
● What is Success;
● The lasting changes because of COVID;
● Living in a Austin versus in New York.
Resources/Links:
LAWCLERK, official website
Reid Collins & Tsai, official website
Quotes:
“I want to create a team incentive. We’re all on the same team. Anybody’s success is everybody’s success.” – Bill Reid
“We do a lot of hybrid work. But I would say about 97%-98% of what we do has some element of a success fee in it. And there’s a business component to that, which is, ‘We think our time is better spent trying to get success fees now that we’ve built our brand.’” – Bill Reid
“It’s those sorts of things, when you can figure out the riddle (the complicated riddle that I don’t think any two lawyers in America can figure out). It’s just so fun to do that. It’s so rewarding.” – Bill Reid
“It gives the client budgetary certainty, which is something that the (even the pure contingency lawyer asking the client paying for) cannot do.” – Bill Reid, on their expense reserve budget
“If the client doesn’t actually participate with you on a hybrid deal (or at least pay expenses in the contingency world) and the client truly has no risk, then the client is free to make uneconomic decisions and you (the lawyer) suffers all the risk.” – Bill Reid