Rachel Frank Quinton

Rachel Frank Quinton is a senior associate in Quinn Emanuel’s Washington, D.C. office. Her practice spans complex litigation at every stage—investigation, trial, and appeals up to the Supreme Court—with particular focus on the hardest legal questions any case presents.

Rachel has served as counsel of record before the Supreme Court of the United States and regularly represents clients before the Court, with experience across First Amendment, criminal procedure, administrative law, and jurisdictional matters. She also represents clients in federal district and appellate courts, government investigations, high-stakes congressional testimony, and negotiations with senior federal officials. Rachel has also led high-profile SEC and regulatory investigations through resolution with no charges brought against our clients.

Her clients include major technology companies and their executives, prominent public figures, leading universities, and nonprofit organizations. She has played a central role in the firm’s long-running representation of Elon Musk and Tesla across a series of constitutional, regulatory, and governance disputes—including Tornetta v. Musk, the appeal of Musk’s $56 billion compensation package before the Delaware Supreme Court, which the Court reversed in favor of Tesla’s board. Other significant representations include Harvard University in its defense against the Trump Administration, New York City Mayor Eric Adams in his federal criminal prosecution, the National Association of Realtors in defending a multi-billion-dollar antitrust settlement, and Special Counsels Robert Hur and David Weiss in congressional testimony.

United States v. Kim, a high-profile federal bribery prosecution in Washington, D.C., ended in a full acquittal after less than a day of jury deliberations. Rachel was responsible for key dispositive motions, through trial and retrial.

Her Supreme Court work has included Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton and Glossip v. Oklahoma in October Term 2024, where she appeared at counsel’s table for oral argument in both cases, as well as Powell v. SEC, Sripetch v. Garland, and Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, among others. Rachel’s work has been cited by both Justices Thomas and Sotomayor, and she was featured on the I Am the Law podcast, where she discussed her appellate practice and the journey from first draft to Supreme Court oral argument.

Rachel is at the forefront of the firm’s development of AI-assisted tools for appellate practice and trial preparation, work aimed at keeping Quinn Emanuel ahead of how the legal industry deploys emerging technology.

She maintains an active pro bono practice focused on constitutional and civil rights issues, including successfully securing compassionate release for a client who had served thirty years of a life sentence.

Before joining the firm, Rachel served as a law clerk to Judge Diana Gribbon Motz on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School and her B.A. from Middlebury College.