David H. Williams

I grew up during the ‘60s. We had Elvis, the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. I remember seeing the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy on TV. We had the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Woodstock and Watergate. Those things shape who you are and what you think about the world and your country.

My dad was the first in his family to go to college. He was a WWII vet and went to Hendrix on the GI Bill where he then became a doctor. My mother had a college degree, but she stayed home and raised five of us. All of us were good athletes, playing everything except soccer. (There was no soccer back then.)

I think I became a trial lawyer as a result of all these things. You need to have a desire for competition to be a trial lawyer. You need to believe in what you are doing to be a trial lawyer. I believe in the Seventh Amendment and our right in this country to have a jury of citizens decide disputes. I think efforts to limit that right are wrong-headed and shortsighted. You need a jury of 12 regular people to remind us every now and then about what is right and wrong, and to place a value on life, liberty and property.

I like working with other lawyers. We are all trying to do our jobs and represent our clients. None of us like to lose, but we understand that one of us surely will at trial. So, we get pretty good at problem-solving. If you can’t handle losing, and you aren’t good at problem-solving, you don’t need to be a trial lawyer. ‘Lead, follow, or…’ – you know the rest!