Description of field of expertise

Rasheed McWilliams is a first-chair trial counsel who is always ready to tackle his client's pressing commercial and intellectual property problems. From handling contract terminations and prelitigation disputes to taking a client's case to trial, he leverages over two decades of litigation and trial experience to help sophisticated companies solve complex legal problems. As a trial attorney, Rasheed has tried numerous bench and jury trials to verdict, including obtaining a number of complete defense verdicts. Rasheed makes frequent appearances before state courts, U.S. district courts, the ITC, and arbitral bodies (JAMS, AAA, IFTA, and the ICC). He has been lead counsel in over 150 intellectual property and commercial litigation matters.

Named as one of the country's top trademark attorneys (WTR Gold), Rasheed is a skilled partner in enforcing and protecting his clients' valuable brands in trademark infringement litigation. His trademark clients include business consultancies, financial institutions, and food and beverage companies. Rasheed's copyright work includes enforcing and defending against claims for copyright infringement based on diverse copyrights, including books, business spreadsheets, computer software, motion pictures, and musical compositions. His clients in the copyright space include film distributors, financial institutions, large hospital groups, and healthcare technology companies. Rasheed's high technology practice focuses on the prosecution and defense of claims for trade secret misappropriation and patent infringement. His patent and trade secret clients include companies operating across diverse fields such as automotive, computer hardware and software, consumer electronics, e-commerce platforms, electronic payment systems, fintech, high-voltage transformers, network security, speech recognition software, telephony and Voice over IP (VoIP), and video game development.

Rasheed also has extensive experience with entertainment and technology transactional matters, particularly in relation to content acquisition, intellectual property sales, and intellectual property valuation for M&A.

What advice would you offer to new attorneys interested in your field?

My most important advice to new attorneys is to master your craft.  A successful trial lawyer has mastered a number of skills that allow for success, but the most important is the attention to detail. Document review is often viewed as a mundane task that is not very exciting, however, mastering the document production in your cases will allow you to master the facts, which will allow you to gather the evidence needed to solve your client’s problems. In my early career as a member of trial teams, it was my mastery of the documents that allowed me to get more chances to take and defend depositions and to take witnesses at trial. Taking and defending countless depositio

Final thoughts...

Never underestimate the power of your networks.  Business development is a career long endeavor that starts with the networks formed in undergraduate and law school.  Each of your contacts is a potential source of business so cultivate a reputation for excellence and integrity.