Quinn Emanuel Trial Lawyers
Why Work Here
OPENING STATEMENT
At Quinn Emanuel you will not have to wait 8 to 10 years to find out whether you have what it takes. You will meet clients to give them advice — not to sit and listen.
You will go to court to argue — not to carry someone's bags. You will attend depositions to examine witnesses — not to take notes. You will compete with your adversaries — not other lawyers at the firm.
All the while some of the best trial lawyers in the country will help you learn how to become a master of the courtroom. If you believe you have the potential to do these things before your peers, Quinn Emanuel is the place for you.
Every year, a new cadre of gifted young lawyers with their pick of job offers makes Quinn Emanuel their first choice. Here’s why:
THE EVIDENCE
Trial Lawyers, Not Litigators
Litigation is a zero sum game. There is a winner and a loser. We approach all cases as though they were going to trial. We start fast. After gathering essential facts and reviewing the pleadings, we prepare the case with an eye toward the courtroom. Discerning the potential trial issues in every case from the outset not only increases the likelihood of prevailing in court, it enhances the possibility of winning at summary judgment.
As we approach trial we test our trial themes by making presentations to “mock juries,” using our own proprietary method. Because the costs are modest, we can repeat the process until we find the trial themes that strike home with potential jurors. Our mock jury program has been so successful that we are often retained by clients to conduct mock trials in cases in which we are not otherwise involved.
It is an open secret that very few big United States law firms try cases anymore. Quinn Emanuel does. Unlike most large corporate firms, we do not litigate cases for years only to settle on the courthouse steps. We try lots of cases — and win them. See a representative list of our notable trials and settlements.
We are frequently brought in at the eleventh hour to replace existing counsel before trial (after they fail to obtain summary judgment) and also in the middle of trial. In one case we took over a trial that had been going on for three weeks — and we won. See a representative list of recent matters in which we have been substituted in as trial counsel.
Opposing counsel are aware of our willingness to try cases, which gives us a substantial advantage over business litigators at many large firms. There are thousands of “litigators,” but finding an experienced trial lawyer for a business case can be tough.
Our trial orientation makes Quinn Emanuel a magnet for trial lawyers at all stages of their careers. We have been called “the closest thing in the private sector to a United States Attorney’s Office.” The firm’s partners teach other lawyers how to try cases, both within the firm and in forums around the country. They lecture on trial advocacy for Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, Boalt, the California State Bar Association’s Annual Trial Symposium, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, the Inns of Court, and the Institute for Corporate Counsel sponsored by the University of Southern California Law School.
We Develop Trial Lawyers, Not Bag Carriers
We have built a reputation for quality work, much of it done by our young lawyers. We have no bureaucracy or preconceived notions about apprentice periods. You don’t have to join the U.S. Attorney’s Office or be a 45-year-old partner to try a case. You don’t have to be a sixth-year associate to speak to the general counsel of a client, take a deposition, pitch a new client, or appear in court. You don’t have to put in years as a research drone writing memos to the file. You don’t have to occupy a designated slot in a bureaucracy for nine years to be considered for partnership.
With an emphasis on quality, not quantity, we staff leanly. As a result, we expect even new associates to foster client relationships and bring in new business, participate in making critical decisions, and gain experience quickly in oral advocacy. Quinn Emanuel also cultivates a strong sense of camaraderie that promotes the free exchange of ideas and helps make us the top business litigation firms in the United States.
A reputation for legal excellence, a roster of blue-chip clients and an environment that rewards entrepreneurship make Quinn Emanuel the clear choice for talented lawyers looking to excel early in their careers.
Associates go to court, take depositions, examine witnesses, and argue motions. When associates write, they prepare complaints, summary judgment motions and client communications — not just research memoranda. Our associates are in constant contact with clients, often serving as the primary conduit between the client and the firm.
Because our associates play such an integral role in our cases, we devote an extraordinary amount of time and effort to identifying and recruiting top talent. We believe we have attracted the finest group of young lawyers at any firm in the United States.
Elite young lawyers come to Quinn Emanuel because they know they will work on exciting cases involving complex legal issues for some of America's best-known companies – companies such as IBM, Shell Oil, Disney, Genentech, Intuit, Electronic Arts, Corbis, HBO, Sony Electronics, Nike, DIRECTV, The Los Angeles Times, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and many others. They come because they know that — unlike the “litigation departments” at most big firms — we try cases. They come because they like the work and the people they work with. And they come because we judge our lawyers by their ability, not by the year they graduated from law school.
We have no place for the rigid hierarchies and bureaucracies of more conventional law firms. We believe they stifle creativity and prevent motivated new lawyers from serving clients. Our lawyers expect to play a major role in significant cases — and we make certain that they do.
We Will Train You -- Really
As a firm that prides itself on trial practice, we believe it is imperative that our associates have opportunities for trial training and experience beginning as soon as they arrive at the firm. Accordingly, we have developed an extraordinary program of educational and experiential opportunities to learn trial skills.
It is the firm's goal that every associate shall have participated in a trial by the end of their second year. As of January 2007, we have met that goal with respect to 95% of our second year associates.
Additional Associate In Trial We place an additional junior associate on every trial and arbitration team (that is, in addition to any other associates already on the team). The additional associate is given an in-court role, for example, preparing and/or displaying graphics, reviewing deposition testimony, revising cross-examination outlines, handling exhibits and assisting the other team members with any other needed tasks. Because we believe this experience is important for our associates, we eat the cost.
This program is designed to ensure that junior associates get an early opportunity to see the "nuts and bolts" of trial, even if the cases they are otherwise working on might not be scheduled for trial right away. This is important because unless you have been in trial -- and have seen how all the pre-trial work plays out -- you can't fully appreciate why we do the things we do in discovery and the other pretrial stages. We believe that knowing why things are done, and how evidence will be used at trial, makes us better lawyers in the pre-trial phase.
“Rookie School” Every September each office holds the Quinn Emanuel "Rookie Schools" for all the new first-year associates. Last year, for example, the firm's Los Angeles first-years enjoyed a weekend whitewater rafting trip on the American River, and then three days of instruction on issues likely to be faced in their first year. This program was followed up by weekly training sessions through the end of the year, hosted by different partners. The training sessions are designed to address a wide range of issues important to young lawyers, including substantive areas (for example, arbitration taught by arbitration guru Fred Bennett and depositions taught by Bill Price) and practical skills not effectively taught in law school (such as handling filings, getting assignments and managing workload).
Trial Advocacy Recognizing that great trial lawyers are made, not born, in addition to the case-related initiatives described above, the firm invests heavily on trial advocacy training for its associates. The firm offers associates three trial advocacy training programs taught by the best trial advocacy instructors in the country, both inside and outside the firm, including many partners in the firm who have taught trial advocacy as adjunct professors of law, at the National Institute of Trial Advocacy ("NITA") and in other programs such as the Attorney General's Advocacy Institute. First, associates participate in the firm's Basic Trial Advocacy program. Using materials and mock case files from NITA, associates work through a 50-hour program of demonstrations, lectures and practice exercises, including extensive use of video review. The basic program culminates in a full-day mock trial using real jurors hired by the firm, in which the participants try a case from voir dire to verdict.
After completing the Basic Trial Advocacy course, associates participate in the firm's Deposition Skills program, which focuses on developing deposition testimony that can be effectively used at trial, and the firm's Advanced Trial Advocacy program, in which they hone their skills in a 40-hour program that includes a mock bench trial. The advanced program emphasizes expert testimony, trial strategy in more complex cases and the persuasive use of graphics and other demonstratives.
Two trial advocacy programs are offered each year: the Basic and Advanced programs are offered in alternate years, in the Fall, and the Deposition Skills program is offered each Spring. Associates from all of the firm's offices participate. The firm's trial advocacy programs prepare our associates to develop their skills as trial advocates, and to think about all of their cases with trial in mind, so they can do what we do best for our clients--win.
Further, we believe that the best way to master the art of being a trial lawyer is by trying real cases. Therefore, the firm has arranged with various clients, community groups and government organizations for Quinn Emanuel associates to run and try a variety of small cases. These opportunities allow our associates to be in the drivers’ seat, with partners taking the supporting roles.
Pro Bono Work: For the Public Good and the Good of the Associates
Quinn Emanuel is dedicated to providing pro bono legal services to individuals and organizations throughout the world. Associate pro bono hours are recorded and tracked by the firm. Pro bono hours are taken into account and historically have been counted towards billable hours on a one-to-one basis. Associates are welcome to initiate pro bono projects, subject to obtaining partner approval and sponsorship. Quinn Emanuel has provided pro bono legal services in a number of distinguished cases in a wide variety of subject areas.
In 2007, ten of our associates received the Wiley Manuel Award for pro bono service from the State Bar of California for their work last year on special education due process cases. The firm also was nominated for the State Bar's pro bono firm of the year, for which we received an honorable mention. These associates were trailblazers in an advocacy training program that has taken us to trial three times in the past six months, and another trial is about to start. Associates have obtained valuable stand-up experience in adversarial hearings, and also helped disabled and financially disadvantaged kids who otherwise would not have not received the services they need from local school districts.
The following are examples of our recent pro bono projects:
- We represented Charles Turner, who was a prison inmate in Northern California serving a potential life term. Twenty-eight years ago, when Turner was 20 years old, his accomplice in a robbery shot the victim after Turner left the scene. Although the sentencing judge imposed the mandatory life sentence, he recommended that Turner be released on parole after 8 years given his limited role in the crime and his immediate and genuine remorse. Despite that recommendation, and even though Turner had a nearly perfect prison record, Turner remained in prison for 28 years. We persuaded the Board of Parole Hearings to grant parole after a half-day evidentiary hearing, based in part on a prior injunction issued by the Eastern District of California following grant of summary judgment in 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 case. For life prisoners like Turner, this happens about 1% of the time. After the decision came down, a guard who had been there for 22 years joked, "I never saw that before." The governor approved the Parole Board's decision and Turner is seeing the outside world for the first time since Jimmy Carter was president.
- We represented two brothers who were sentenced to life without parole under Alabama's "three strikes" law. They had been convicted of burglary in 1997. We took on the case on appeal, after it was referred to us by the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute. We represented them through the Alabama courts, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and back down again.
- We represented an individual named Jose Leon, upon being appointed by the Court after Mr. Leon was charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office with participating in a conspiracy to distribute more than a kilogram of heroin. Mr. Leon had been arrested while delivering a kilogram of heroin to a government informant and, before we were appointed, confessed to his role. The Court entered a guilty pleas and despite the existence of a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence for federal crimes involving at least of kilogram of heroin, sentenced him to a jail term of less than 3 years.
The firm has a longstanding relationship with Bet Tzedek Legal Services, Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute, Public Counsel, and the Alliance for Children’s Rights, among many other organizations, to provide a variety of pro bono legal services. Further, Kathleen Sullivan, who chairs our appellate group, and is the former dean of Stanford Law School and a nationally recognized constitutional law scholar, remains a member of the Stanford Law School faculty as the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law and the Director of Stanford's new Constitutional Law Center. As Director of the Constitutional Law Center, she has filed pro bono amicus briefs on which her students work in current cases involving challenges to warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, to denial of broadcast ads for grass root groups in the current campaign finance case in the US Supreme Court, and challenges to the denial of habeas corpus to Guantamano defendants. Her portfolio of legal work includes several notable pro bono cases and she is always looking for dedicated attorneys to help.
The firm is always working to expand opportunities for lawyers to participate in pro bono activities, recognizing that this type of work uniquely contributes to a lawyer’s professional development, and provides badly needed services to the community. In furtherance of the firm's commitment to pro bono work, the firm has assigned Marshall Searcy as the partner in charge of all pro bono cases, and each office has a designated partner to coordinate such assignments.
Our Commitment to Diversity
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 demonstrated 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 renown 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.
Two years running we have made women who are 7 months pregnant partners. 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 as many women trial lawyers with the level of experience, not to mention the record of victories, that ours do.
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 comprise 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.
Socializing, Building Friendships and Breaking Down Barriers
Partners, associates and summer associates build friendships outside the traditional boundaries of work. Firm events, such as the annual “firm hike” to such places as Olympic National Park, Washington; Bend, Oregon; Big Sur, California; Wind River, Wyoming; Grand Canyon, Arizona; and Zion Canyon, Utah, help break down the conventional barriers and hierarchies that characterize many law firms.
To further give partners and associates a chance to interact and get to know each other, we've broken our Los Angeles lawyers into four social groups of about 40 lawyers each. Our group system is designed to allow our firm to keep some of the benefits we had when we were smaller. The purpose of the groups is to foster mentoring relationships and allow the partners in the groups to keep in touch with associates, make sure the workload is distributed evenly, and plan fun things for the group to do together. Some of the events that we have coming up are a baseball game, comedy club and a boat cruise. These events are held year round and not just when the summer associates are here. Each group has four events per year.
Partnership Consideration
We don't really have a partnership "track" like other firms. We generally make people partners when they're ready. However, associates are generally considered for partner 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 years out of law school.
CLOSING ARGUMENT
Each year we attract some of the best and brightest students from America's best law schools. They could go anywhere. Why do they choose us? Because we are different.
- Trial Lawyers 24/7
- Tough cases are tried, not settled on the courthouse steps
- Our focus is on training you to become the best trial lawyer you can be
- First year lawyers go to court
- Cases are not overstaffed
- No artificial barriers or bureaucratic hierarchy stifle a young lawyer's progress
- Teamwork reigns
- So many different kinds of people from so many different backgrounds
- Oh, and ... We Win (A lot.)