William B. Smith
Fifty-two years at the California bar and the only one of these twelve whose record carries the State Bar's optional self-reported block — practice areas, languages and law school. The others left it empty. His firm's page is the third on this site to cover Waymo, and the first to name the software partners and parts manufacturers as separate defendants.
The bar record
We read William B. Smith in the State Bar of California’s licensee search. California publishes more history than most registers: a bar number, a dated status timeline, and administrative as well as disciplinary actions.
California is the one register that tells you it removes its own history. Above the status table, every record carries this: some administrative suspensions are subject to automatic removal from the attorney profile page pursuant to the State Bar’s policy on removal of administrative actions ... administrative suspensions that meet the criteria in that policy would not be displayed below.
Administrative suspensions are not discipline — they follow from things like unpaid fees or missed continuing education. But the sentence still means what it says. A timeline showing nothing is a timeline showing nothing that the State Bar currently displays, and we are not going to write “never suspended” when the register reserves the right to have taken an entry down. No other register on this site says this about itself.
And it does not check what the lawyer tells it. Where a record carries practice areas, the State Bar prints a warning next to them: it does not verify the accuracy of this content and makes no warranties regarding experience or competence in practice areas. Eleven of the twelve lawyers on our San Francisco page left that block empty altogether, so for most of them the register holds a name, a number, an address and a status — and nothing about what they actually do.
What the record shows
His is the only record of the twelve that carries California’s optional self-reported block: five practice areas, French as a language, and UC Hastings as the law school. Eleven of the twelve left all of it blank, so for them the register holds a name, a number, an address and a status — and nothing about what they do.Verified
The State Bar prints a warning directly above that block: it does not verify the accuracy of this content and makes no warranties regarding experience or competence in practice areas. Washington says its equivalent block might be wrong; California says it never checked.Verified
The firm’s page treats Waymo as its own category, naming Waymo and its software partners, and the manufacturers of parts, as potentially separate defendants. Two other listings on this site mention autonomous vehicles — Echevarria in Miami and Riback in Chicago — and neither breaks the defendants apart like this.Verified
Fifty-two years, admitted 19 December 1973. Four lawyers on this site have longer records; he is the longest in California.Verified
What the firm says
He says he has represented the catastrophically injured since 1973, has served clients in California, the United States, Canada and Europe, and personally handles all of his cases.Reported
He says he has been elected to all four of the primary national trial lawyer associations — the American Board of Trial Advocates, the American College of Trial Lawyers, the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and the International Society of Barristers — and was elected to the Lawdragon Hall of Fame in 2019.Reported
He says he created the ABOTA Civility Matters programme used nationally, chaired the national Civility and Professionalism Committee, and received the San Francisco chapter’s Don E. Bailey Civility Award in 2014.Reported
He says he has taught at UC Hastings since 1982 and been listed in Best Lawyers in America for twenty years.Reported
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What we haven’t checked
No attorney pays to be listed here, and this profile is not an endorsement or a recommendation. We report the public record so you can weigh it yourself. If anything here is inaccurate or out of date, tell us and we’ll correct it. How we work