Getting the right result is as important to Bill McErlean as it is to the clients he represented, and he consistently obtained such results in his nearly four decades of litigation and trial practice. Bill was the Litigation Department Chair Emeritus and served for many years as Litigation Chair and on the firm’s Management Committee.
A proven and consistently effective advocate, Bill tried more than 40 commercial litigation cases, including the first civil RICO action in the Northern District of Illinois. In his former practice, he handled a variety of complex, high-stakes commercial cases in courts and before arbitrators throughout the country, defending and prosecuting RICO, securities fraud and common law fraud claims at trial and on appeal.
Credentials
Education
- Georgetown University Law Center, J.D., 1978, with honors
- University of Notre Dame, B.A., 1975, magna cum laude
Bar Admissions
- California
- Illinois (Retired)
Court Admissions
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
- U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
- U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit