We value diversity. The National Law Journal ranked us as the 6th most diverse law firm in California and the 17th most diverse in the nation. California Lawyer ranked us as the 5th most diverse firm in California. The best proof of our commitment is that so many lawyers of color with outstanding credentials have joined us. Our partners of color are graduates of Boalt, Harvard, Hastings, NYU, Oxford and Stanford. Five of them were law review editors. We are proud that lawyers who could have worked at any law firm in the country chose us.
Our commitment to diversity not only runs deep, it also runs from the top down. Eighteen of our 108 partners are women. Over 20% of our lawyers are of color (including Asians, African Americans, Indians, Native Americans and Hispanics). In furtherance of our commitment to diversity, we have instituted the Quinn Emanuel Diversity Scholarship Program. This opportunity is open to outstanding law students of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. The scholarship includes a $15,000 stipend and a place in Quinn Emanuel's summer associate class for 2009. Kirsten Jackson, a second-year law student from Columbia University, was awarded the first QE Fellow Award and just joined the summer class form 2008. Applicants will be considered based on a demonstrated commitment to pursuing careers in commercial litigation, exceptional academic performance, relevant work experience, community service and leadership skills. The deadline for applications for the 2009 Quinn Emanuel Diversity Scholarship program is September 15, 2008.
We have a record of advancing women. Almost twenty-percent of our partners are women. If you consider that they are all trial lawyers with extensive trial experience (a field of law where there are relatively few women), that number becomes even more significant. We know of no other firm that has so many women trial lawyers with the level of experience, not to mention the record of victories, that ours do. For example, one of our female lawyers is the Former Dean of the Stanford Law School, who would be on anyone’s list of the top appellate advocates in the country. She was recently recognized by The National Law Journal as one of the country's "Top Women Litigators." One of our female partners in New York is a renowned white collar criminal trial lawyer, who was the Deputy Chief of the Civil Rights Division in the U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York. Another one of our female partners is Co-Chair of our National Trial Practice Group and is a former prosecutor who has tried over 60 cases, with over a 93% success rate. These women are top-notch by anyone's standards and chose to make Quinn Emanuel their home.
Our diversity gives us a real leg up in communicating, not only with jurors, but with our clients, witnesses and others from around the world. Our lawyers speak Spanish, German, French, Italian, Armenian, Russian, Finnish, Hungarian, Tagalog, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Farsi and Hebrew, among other languages. We can communicate directly with virtually anyone we need to.
We value diversity not just because of the richness it creates in our firm life, but because it helps us serve our clients at trial. It is a fact of life that juries everywhere are comprised of people of many races and backgrounds. Good trial lawyers know that life experiences influence perceptions and that others have had different experiences. We want the benefit of those experiences in shaping our arguments. We also know that diversity in our trial teams gives us a real advantage in communicating with diverse jurors — one of the keys to winning cases and what our clients hire us to do.