Quinn Emanuel’s Spectacular Hike Started Small, Reflects Culture of Winning With Teams
Quinn Emanuel had just over a dozen lawyers three decades ago when founder John B. Quinn sent a memo inviting anyone who wanted to join him on a hike in southern Utah.
Today QE is the global leader in business litigation and arbitration, but the purpose of its unique annual hike hasn’t changed: to challenge participants in the most beautiful outdoor locations in the world, building the camaraderie at the heart of the firm's team-based approach to winning at trial.
From its humble beginnings, the hike has grown exponentially to a global event. The 32nd outing, which concluded Saturday night with a celebratory dinner in the French Alps, drew more than 370 attorneys.
This year, in Chamonix, the hardy litigators hiked up the mountain as far as 11 miles (18 kilometers), ascending more than 5,400 feet (about 1,650 meters), amid the stunning landscapes at the heart of the Mont Blanc massif.
Mike Joins the Hike
Global Co-Managing Partner Mike Carlinsky joined for the first time and loved it. He was impressed by the hike itself and the beauty of the region, but also by the bonds formed among partners, associates, and summer associates alike, pointing out how unique it is that QE lawyers are so comfortable with each other no matter their position.
“The stories I’ve heard in the last few days, just people coming up to me talking about their experiences, whether they were up on the glacier, whether they were up in the hut, whatever it was,” Carlinsky told the dinner crowd. “We all love this place, and the last three days, man, does it show.”
In a final toast he invoked the late partner Bill Urquhart, who would say, “Cheers to the best people we know – us!”
Partners Tigran Guledjian and Steve Wood, along with associate Evan Larson, plan the hike itself, while Selene Dogan, Global Director of Events and Attorney Programs, does the same for all the critical travel, lodging and dining logistics.
Reflection of Firm’s Culture
The event is challenging by design (and this year was paired with an easier route to meet more people’s needs). Guledjian says the hike, which is entirely voluntary, is unique in its simplicity and free of the gimmickry of the dreary corporate team-building exercise.
“We all get on a trail and we start walking together,” he says. The team building “happens naturally.”
The hike reflects the firm’s culture of assembling formidable teams of partners and associates who depend vitally on each other to be ready for trial at any time. It works because it’s hard, but this year’s announcement email also speaks to its great pleasures.
Now “we head to Chamonix and the splendor of the French Alps to hike in the shadows and grandeur of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Western Europe,” the email read, citing “the experiences you’ll have, the friends you’ll make, and the memories you’ll forever etch into your mind.”
Living the Life
For the second year in a row, the attorneys could choose between a day hike and an overnight version. But unlike past hikes, with all the overnighters sleeping in tents, this year’s event offered the option of a refugio complete with linen service and fine silverware at dinner, a full bar, comfortable beds and a shower in each room, some of them communal. The party on the outdoor deck rocked past midnight.
We kind of took over the little town, bunking down in eight hotels as if we were in our own summer camp – especially at night, when people went out to watch the World Cup. On the bus ride back to the airport Sunday you could hear people saying they didn’t want the weekend to end.
Whichever hike they chose, the lawyers experienced the distinctive culture of Chamonix, eating local fare like fondu and veal escalope. Some also paraglided, rock-climbed, mountain-biked, or river-rafted, and all took gondolas up to the towering peaks, including the world-famous L'Aiguille du Midi tram.
Those activities and amenities provided a nice contrast to the demands of the hike.
But the whole point of the hike is that those demands are shared.
Who Pitched My Tent?
“When you’re out there and you can’t lift your legs up, someone takes a load out of your backpack,” Guledjian says. If you’ve got nothing left when you reach camp, you turn around and someone has put up your tent.
“The hike itself is a force of nature – it’s a locomotive,” he says, recalling John Quinn’s perspective that there’s nothing like a really hard hike to learn what your colleagues are made of.
The spectacular event is also a recruiting tool, particularly for the summer associates who join in. Among the thank-you emails Dogan, Wood and Guledjian got after this year’s hike was one from a summer who called the beauty of Chamonix and the chance to meet colleagues from around the world “amazing.”
If the plan was to convince the summer associates to come back to Quinn Emanuel, he said, “it certainly worked.”