Steven Williams

Career

In over 25 years of practice, Steven Williams has handled successfully and with distinction all aspects of litigation and trial in state and federal courts and in private arbitration. During that time, he has played a lead role in many of the most prominent antitrust class cases litigated in the United States. He has helped recover more than $2 billion for his clients and achieved ground-breaking decisions expanding the scope of antitrust law.

Mr. Williams—previously a long-time partner at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP—practices in the fields of litigation, trial, and client counseling, with an emphasis on representation of civil plaintiffs in antitrust matters. He has represented claimants in cases involving memory chips, pharmaceuticals, auto parts, air passenger transportation, air cargo transportation, cathode ray tubes, capacitors, resistors, flash memory, lithium ion batteries, financial products and services, poultry, and water.

In 2021, Mr. Williams represented a plaintiff class against Facebook, Inc., alleging that Facebook failed to protect content moderators from developing post-traumatic stress disorder and other adverse effects resulting from constant viewing of offensive and extremely disturbing videos, images, and broadcasts posted to Facebook. A ground-breaking $52 million settlement and workplace improvements were obtained.

Mr. Williams has received numerous professional accolades during his legal career:

• American Antitrust Institute: Honoree for Antitrust Enforcement Awards for “Outstanding Antitrust Litigation Achievement in Private Law” for his key role in In re Automotive Parts Antitrust Litigation (2019);

• Benchmark Litigation: Ranked as "National Practice Area Star" and "Local Litigation Star" in the "competition/antitrust,” “commercial,” and “class action” practice areas (2020-present);

• Best Lawyers: Best Lawyers in America (2020-present);

• California Daily Journal: Selected and profiled as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California (2022); Top Plaintiff Lawyers in California (2018-present); Top Antitrust Lawyers in California (2020-2021); California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (2022);

• Chambers USA: Ranked as a Band 1 or Band 2 attorney for Antitrust: Mainly Plaintiff—California (2015-present) and Antitrust: Plaintiff—Nationwide (2017-present);

• Global Competition Review: Litigation of the Year–Cartel Prosecution (shortlisted) (2022);

• Impact Fund: Scola v. Facebook, Inc. case/plaintiffs elected to “Class Action Hall of Fame” (2023);

• Lawdragon: 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers (2019-present); 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers (2022-present);

• Law360: Selected and profiled as one of the Titans of the Plaintiffs Bar (2022);

• Lawdragon 500: Ranked as one of its 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers (2019-present);

• Martindale Hubbell: Rated AV Preeminent (2002-present);

• Super Lawyers: Designated as a Super Lawyer (2005-present) and as Top 100 Northern California Super Lawyer (2016-present) by Thomson Reuters’s Super Lawyers publication; and

• Who's Who Legal: Selected to and profiled in Thought Leaders: Competition publication (2019-present); Who’s Who Legal: Competition, a publication of Who’s Who Legal and Global Competition (2014-present); Who's Who Legal: Commercial Litigation (2021-present).

Mr. Williams has written and lectured on various topics including antitrust, multidistrict litigation, complex litigation, electronic discovery, MTBE litigation, regulatory developments in environmental law, contractual issues in environmental cleanups, and habeas corpus. He has spoken at many venues, including the American Bar Association Antitrust Section Spring Meeting, the California State Bar Antitrust, UCL, and Privacy Section, the New York State Bar Association Antitrust Section, and the Consumer Attorneys of California.

Mr. Williams is currently in leadership for the American Bar Association Antitrust Section, and is a member of the International Cartel Task Force and the Executive Committee of the Committee to Support the Antitrust Laws. He is an advisor to the Executive Committee of the California Lawyers Association Section on Antitrust, Unfair Competition Law, and Privacy Law, and is a past chair of the 2017 Golden State Antitrust Institute. He is also a Board Member of Public Justice and past Chairman of the Board of Community Gatepath, an organization dedicated to serving the needs of developmentally disabled children and adults.

In recent years Mr. Williams has doubled his time engaged in pro bono representations and has worked to get firm associates involved as well. This includes case work through the Justice & Diversity Center's Federal Pro Bono Project (which delivers direct services to pro se litigants in the Northern District of California, and which honored him in 2022 for the "Outstanding Volunteer of the Year" Crystal Award and in 2019 and 2022 as an “Outstanding Volunteer”), case work through the Free Legal Services Program sponsored by the American Bar Association, and as a member of the Legal Network for Gender Equity. Mr. Williams has also taken a lead role with the Committee to Support the Antitrust Laws by engaging in outreach and lobbying efforts to ensure that access to justice for victims of antitrust injuries is not limited.

EDUCATION

Fordham University School of Law, J.D.

New York University, B.A., Russian & Slavic Studies