‘Afraid of Who?’ John Quinn Honored for Lifetime Achievement at American Lawyer Industry Awards
John B. Quinn has a place in legal history as founding partner and chairman of the world’s largest and most formidable disputes-only law firm. And now he has a stack of lifetime achievement awards.
At the American Lawyer Industry Awards last night at Cipriani Wall Street, Quinn won lifetime laurels after being honored twice this year for his extraordinary career at the California Legal Awards and the Legal Business Awards in London. (Because of a flight delay, Quinn Emanuel General Counsel Christopher Tayback accepted the award on John’s behalf and delivered his remarks.)
It’s been a lot of canapés, and an impressive show of respect for Quinn’s singular accomplishments, both as a trial lawyer and as a business strategist.
In a centuries-old industry where the oldest U.S. law firm was founded during the events of Hamilton (and, in Europe, the year Queen Elizabeth was excommunicated), he has seen Quinn Emanuel grow in 40 years from the four attorneys who founded it in Los Angeles to a global powerhouse of 1,100 trial lawyers in 33 offices on four continents, and the go-to firm for high-stakes disputes that knows what wins.
Best Ideas Prevail
Within those offices, the legal culture Quinn fostered from the beginning is one in which the most junior associate can speak up and the best ideas win – so that the client gets the best result. Quinn Emanuel has flourished by becoming the first call that leaders make when they’re locked in a dispute or fighting a threat to the companies they have built.
Earlier this year at the London awards ceremony, Quinn looked back on the founding of his famously trial-ready firm.
“We had an idea for a law firm that would only do disputes,” he recalled. “And people told us that’s not how it’s done – you need some deal lawyers, you need some tax lawyers, you need trusts and estates. You can’t just be disputes lawyers. But guess what: It turns out there’s no shortage of disputes. And the people in those disputes want to win them.”
He noted that the firm’s London office, opened two decades ago, is now its biggest outside the U.S., acknowledged Founding Partner Richard East in the audience, and concluded by sharing his award – and Quinn Emanuel’s success story – with all the lawyers at the firm.
“Every client engagement, every victory, every result, every office we’ve opened is because of the commitment, intelligence, creativity, and gumption of the Quinn Emanuel lawyers who have built our firm,” he said, before leaving the podium with a promise that the firm is still an “unfinished project.”
Read Law.com’s November profile of Quinn here.
Victorious in Court
The dockets are replete with Quinn’s own victories. To name just one, he was a central figure in the $6.01 billion settlement against 3M on behalf of more than 250,000 active U.S. servicemembers injured by defective combat earplugs – the largest mass tort in U.S. history, now successfully closed.
His wins owe much to an adventurous spirit, one of the many qualities QE’s lawyers cherish in John. That boldness and our precision teamwork are both reflected in the firm’s spectacular annual hikes, which began with a memo John sent in 1993, when we had just a few dozen lawyers, inviting them to join him on a hike in southern Utah.
He cited a 19th-century explorer who described the Escalante Canyons as “a maze of cliffs and terraces” and “burning plains barren even of sage – all glowing with bright color and flooded with blazing sunlight.”
He told Law.com in June that his main role now is to “identify and create opportunities for my partners—and then help them execute.” Looking to the future, he said attorneys who learn to optimize AI as a tool will have an enormous advantage.
And the best advice for young lawyers? “Pay attention to what is happening in the world.”
Crucial Inflection Points
He expanded: “Every major change in technology, in geopolitics, and in business eventually ends up in the courts. The lawyers who are paying attention to those inflection points before they arrive will be the ones doing the most consequential work.”
Quinn takes his own advice. Last month he wrote a memorable account of his latest trip abroad, with the very clickable headline “What I Saw in China Should Worry and Impress Every American Executive.”
In the piece, he details the intense domestic market rivalry turning out super-competitors and how Chinese companies are playing an increasingly sophisticated role as parties in U.S. courts. Meanwhile Quinn Emanuel just celebrated a decade on the mainland and published a short, must-read white paper on five major changes shaping cross-border litigation for those Chinese businesses.
Discussing his focus on client and business development, Quinn told Legal Business in October that in China he was often asked if he was “afraid to represent Chinese companies in the U.S.,” given the geopolitics.
“It never occurred to me,” he said. “Afraid of who?”