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Eric Emanuel -- co-founder of the firm with John Quinn -- has had a career that has familiarized him with every phase of litigation, from TRO's to trial and appeal.  He has seen the inside of courtrooms from San Francisco to San Diego.  He has been to corporate headquarters to meet CEOs; to the floors of manufacturing facilities to meet blue collar workers, to the sub-basements of office buildings to consult experts on leaks; and to the streets of South Central to interview witnesses.  He has handled cases involving intellectual property, real property, sculptures, unfair competition and torts of all types, but his favorite cases are employment disputes.  Those suits are almost always "mini-dramas" between a supervisor and a subordinate.

Although he continues to try cases, in recent years he has devoted a greater percentage of his time to writing and developing the professional skills of younger lawyers.  His office is the "Sensei office" where he advises younger lawyers on legal problems, and, on occasions, shares a story or two about growing up on a farm in Nebraska.

Mr. Emanuel's "specialty" is the art and science of persuasive briefs on complex issues.  A substantial part of his practice is reviewing and editing briefs in matters handled by others.  His first appellate brief, in fact, was an amicus brief on behalf of Public Counsel on an arcane landlord tenant issue.  That case resulted in his first published opinion in 1984.  He has continued to practice before state and federal appellate courts.  He has been a member of the bars of the 9th Circuit Courts of Appeal and the United States Supreme Court since 1989.
 

He considers his most satisfying legal work to be a dispositive motion that avoids the expense and risk of trial.  In his view, a defendant should have as much of a right to avoid trial in a meritless case, as a plaintiff has a right to trial in a meritorious one.  Among his memorable law and motion victories is a matter for Mattel in which the plaintiff claimed she was forced to resign because of intolerable working conditions that were retaliation for her "whistleblowing."  His brief persuaded the trial court, and later the appellate court, that the plaintiff's internal complaints were not protected "whistleblowing" but unprotected threats to coerce a promotion and raise.

On behalf of the advanced aviation division of Lockheed Corporation (the so-called "Skunk Works"), Mr. Emanuel obtained summary judgment in an action by several employees alleging discrimination for the failure to permit them to work on one of the nation's most secret defense programs.

The world-wide engineering firm of the Ralph M. Parsons Company retained Mr. Emanuel to handle the appeal of a matter that had been tried by a different law firm.  The result was a reversal, and on remand, the matter was ultimately dismissedwithout a retrial and without the company paying a settlement.

Four white, senior executives sued a grocery chain when they were laid off.  The plaintiffs all had long, successful careers but lost their jobs to younger men after the merger of their company with another.  By using statistics and showing the logical necessity of layoffs of redundant positions following a merger, Mr. Emanuel obtained summary judgment for the company.

In a case against a Disney company brought by one of its in-house counsel, the plaintiff alleged a wide array of discriminatory acts and backed them up with his testimony at deposition.  As an attorney the plaintiff no doubt believed he had raised triable issues of fact to get to the jury.  But the key to a successful motion for summary judgment is one dispositive, indisputable fact.  Mr. Emanuel found one, and Disney prevailed.