Admitted to practice law since 1993, Bill has extensive litigation experience, including federal and state trials, writs, and appeals. During Bill’s sixteen years as a Deputy County Counsel for Monterey County, he handled litigation addressing a broad range of legal issues, including free speech, use of force by law enforcement personnel, environmental public nuisance, employment discrimination, personal injury/dangerous condition of property, and breach of contract. Bill also has considerable experience advising on public sector employment issues, such as the rights of government employees generally, the relevance of applicable memoranda of understanding, and the Public Safety Officers’ Procedural Bill of Rights Act (“POBRA”).  Over the years Bill advised Monterey County departments ranging from the Health Department and Natividad Medical Center to the Public Defender’s Office to Contracts/Purchasing.

In private practice from 2002-2006, Bill primarily represented plaintiffs in employment, consumer, and civil rights litigation.  The experience of having represented both employees and employers in workplace disputes provides Bill with unusual perspective into employee-employer relationships and the wide range of scenarios that may play out in the workplace.

Bill’s first exposure to workplace investigations occurred in the mid-1990s, when his former law professor, Sharon Lybeck Hartmann, hired him to join her team at the neutral, court-appointed, Office of the Civil Rights Monitor for Denny’s Restaurants.  There he assisted with recruiting and training investigators and analyzing investigation reports.  Later, while with the Monterey County Counsel’s Office, Bill occasionally served as the County’s liaison with “external” workplace investigators.  In addition, he presented and helped develop trainings on topics such as prevention of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in conjunction with the County’s Civil Rights Office.  Bill also routinely functioned as an informal investigator in connection with litigation he handled, interviewing countless witnesses and reviewing and synthesizing myriad documents in the process.

Bill earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction from Cornell University and a Juris Doctor degree from the UCLA School of Law.  He is admitted to practice in California, and before the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Central Districts of California, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.  Bill has practiced law in Los Angeles and the Bay Area as well as on the Central Coast.  He served on the Board of Directors of the Monterey County Bar Association for seven years, including a term as MCBA President in 2017.  He has attended various ADR programs, including “Masters of Mediation,” and completed the Monterey County Superior Court’s training for temporary judges.  He also served on the Monterey County Superior Court Joint Committee on the Elimination of Bias.  Bill is a member of the Association of Workplace Investigators and holds a certificate from AWI after successfully completing its Training Institute (AWI-CH).