Bill Bay

Thompson Coburn LLP

Bill has long been an active leader in the American Bar Association and served as President during 2024-2025. He served as the 2018-2020 Chair of the ABA House of Delegates, the policymaking body of the association. Bill is also a past Chair of the ABA Section of Litigation, the largest section in the ABA, and a past member of the ABA Board of Governors, serving as the chair of the Board’s Finance Committee. He is Past President of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis and served as a member of the Board of Governors of The Missouri Bar. Bill has been selected as chair of multiple statewide commissions, examining critical issues in the practice of law. He served as the co-chair of the Supreme Court of Missouri’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Fairness. He is also a member of the American Law Institute, the leading independent organization in the United States that produces scholarly work to clarify, modernize and improve the law.

Bay is a highly experienced litigator who has represented major corporations in high-stakes litigation for more than 30 years. His clients vary from major financial institutions to manufacturers to post-secondary institutions, and he regularly helps organizations manage and respond to large portfolios of litigation in multiple jurisdictions.

In recent years, Bay has been honored with the Spurgeon Smithson award, a top honor given by The Missouri Bar; the Distinguished Lawyer Award, the highest honor awarded by the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis; an Excellence in Law Award from St. Louis Magazine; and Missouri Lawyers Weekly’s Influential Lawyer Award. He has appeared in The Best Lawyers in America since 2012 and has been recognized by Best Lawyers multiple times as the St. Louis Lawyer of the Year for Litigation-Banking and Finance.

Bay received his B.A. from the University of Missouri and his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.