William R. Spade Esq.

William Spade is a criminal defense lawyer with more than 20 years of experience defending the constitutional rights of corporations, executives, businesspeople, government officials, and ordinary citizens. By virtue of his experience as the graduate of a Top 5 law school, large law firm lawyer, federal judicial clerk, and former Philadelphia prosecutor, Spade has both the academic skills necessary to successfully guide clients through complex, document-intensive federal grand jury investigations to avoid indictment, and the trial skills to gain acquittals for clients before judges and juries if that becomes necessary. 

Will Spade graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1990. He was admitted to practice in Pennsylvania in November, 1990. From 1990 to 1994, he was an associate at the law firm of Dechert, Price & Rhoads. From 1994 to 1995, he clerked for the Honorable Eduardo C. Robreno in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

While clerking for Judge Robreno, Spade published "Beyond the 100:1 Ratio: Towards a Rational Cocaine Sentencing Policy" in Volume 38, No. 4 of the Arizona Law Review. The "Beyond the 100:1 Ratio" article has been cited by hundreds of legal scholars, judges, and lawyers as part of the ongoing debate regarding the inequity of the federal cocaine sentencing laws, which punish more harshly those who use and sell crack cocaine than those who use or sell powder cocaine. Most recently, the article was cited by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Gunter, 2006 U.S. App. LEXIS 23143 (3d Cir. Sept. 11, 2006).

From 1995 to 2004, Spade was an Assistant District Attorney in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. During his nearly ten years as a prosecutor, Spade argued numerous cases before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, litigated several capital homicide cases, and was a lead prosecutor in the grand jury investigation into the sexual abuse of minors by priests within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. For an account of Spade's work on the grand jury investigation, see, "Pain, Anger Went Into Philadelphia Abuse Report: The Investigation of Molestation By Priests Was An Ordeal for Witnesses, Jurors, Lawyers" By Nancy Phillips, Mark Fazlollah, and Emily Lounsberry, Philadelphia Inquirer, September 25, 2005.

In September, 2004, Spade left the District Attorney's Office and started the Law Offices of William Spade. His first client was former City of Philadelphia Treasurer Corey Kemp whom Spade defended in a six-week federal jury trial before the Honorable Michael Baylson. Kemp's conviction is currently on appeal before the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In the nearly three years that Spade has been in private practice, he has won acquittals for a man who was falsely accused of carjacking an off-duty Philadelphia police officer, a man who was falsely accused of attempting to stab to death a man in his neighborhood and scores of individuals who have been falsely accused of possessing or distributing narcotics.