William W. Taylor, III is a founding partner of Zuckerman Spaeder and one of the country’s foremost litigators.
Over the course of his 40-year career, he has litigated numerous high-profile civil and criminal matters, often under intense media scrutiny.
Bill practices in federal and state courts nationwide and has tried more than 60 cases to judgment. While an experienced trial lawyer, he is also well-known for his creative motions practice and is often successful in obtaining dismissal of charges against his clients before trial. He is equally at home in complex commercial litigations and straightforward credibility contests. Clients retain him not only for his litigation successes but also for his judgment and advice.
Bill’s clients have included:public officials such as former International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former Rep. Tom Feeney, and the late Sen. Alan Cranston;executives such as former New York Stock Exchange Compensation Committee chair Kenneth Langone, former Salt Lake City Olympic Committee chair Thomas Welch and former CEO of Massey Energy Company Donald Blankenship; and a wide variety of public and private organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, hedge funds, law firms, and unions, among others.
He has conducted internal investigations in addition to representing clients in criminal prosecutions, regulatory enforcement, civil litigation, congressional investigation, and ethics inquiries. A former public defender, Bill is also committed to pro bono work and his clients include death row inmates.
Bill is a sought-after speaker at American Bar Association and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers conferences and he has taught at the University of North Carolina Law School, the George Washington University Law School, and Catholic University Law School. He is the former chair of the ABA’s Criminal Justice Section and has authored numerous publications, including a recent widely read article urging reform of the criminal discovery rules published in The National Law Journal.