William Walter Fick

William ("Bill") Fick is a veteran trial and appellate attorney. Prior to founding Fick & Marx LLP, he represented hundreds of clients facing federal criminal charges over a decade working as an Assistant Federal Public Defender.

Bill was co-counsel for the defense in two of the biggest and most challenging criminal trials in recent Boston history: United States v. Tsarnaev (the Boston Marathon Bombing case) and United States v. O'Brien (racketeering charges based on so-called "patronage" hiring in the Massachusetts Probation Department).

Bill has tried multiple federal cases to verdict and has obtained acquittals or dismissals of charges involving fraud, regulatory crimes (FDA and Lacey Act), computer crimes, firearms, narcotics, immigration, bank robbery, child exploitation, and sex offender civil commitment. Bill also has negotiated favorable dispositions and fought for fair sentences on behalf of clients who elected to plead guilty or were convicted at trial. Finally, Bill successfully briefed and argued multiple appealsresolving a variety of novel legal issues.

Prior to working for the Federal Public Defender, Bill was an associate at Foley Hoag LLP, a premier Boston law firm, where his practice included civil litigation, white collar criminal defense, construction arbitration, appeals, and an active pro bono docket. Among other matters, he represented European investment bank affiliates in a pair of legal malpractice suits arising from the collapse of an investment vehicle for Russian assets. He also participated in a human and labor rights audit in Azerbaijan and Georgia on behalf of an international energy company. In 2006, he received the Detention Attorney Award from the Political Asylum and Immigration Representation Project (PAIR), recognizing his pro bono work on behalf of clients in immigration custody and removal proceedings.

Bill served as a law clerk to the Honorable Nancy Gertner, United States District Judge for the District of Massachusetts, who is now retired from the bench and of counsel to Fick & Marx LLP.

Bill earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as a Coker teaching fellow and was awarded the Francis Wayland Prize. He graduated with a B.A. magna cum laude from Yale College, where he received a Charles P. Howland Fellowship and was awarded the Von Staden Cup, conferred on the student who "most consistently challenged the social and intellectual conscience of the college" (Ezra Stiles). Bill was also Editor-in-Chief of The Yale Herald and a part-time student "stringer" for The New York Times.

For much of the 1990s, Bill lived in Moscow, Russia, where he designed and managed an array of projects to develop access to the Internet (still in its infancy at the time) across the former Soviet Union. He speaks fluent Russian.