Atkins ’80 Named D.C. Bar’s Lawyer of the Year
William Atkins ’80, a longtime intellectual property partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, has been named the 2025 Lawyer of the Year by the Bar Association of the District of Columbia (BADC). The BADC, founded at the historic National Hotel in 1871, is the first bar association in the District of Columbia and one of the four oldest bar associations in the United States.
This award is the highest honor bestowed by the BADC. It recognizes Atkins’s exceptional legal skill and deep commitment to the bar. Over the course of more than three decades, he has led hundreds of complex IP litigations in courts, before the U.S. Patent Office, and at the International Trade Commission.
In addition to his litigation work, Atkins has made significant contributions to the profession, authoring multiple editions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) Handbook, co-editing the Patent Litigation Strategies Handbook, and serving as an adjunct professor of intellectual property law at George Washington University and the University of Maryland. Atkins earned his JD from the University of Baltimore in 1992.
Atkins will be honored at the 154th Annual BADC Banquet & Gala on Saturday, December 6, 2025, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Atkins ’80 Named D.C. Bar’s Lawyer of the Year
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