Biglaw

Being John Quinn

John Quinn's firm may not look like a lot of firms, but it works.

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John Quinn could destroy me. I don’t mean in a courtroom, though he is famous as one of America’s top trial lawyers. I mean that in a street fight, the 66-year-old I interviewed at the Los Angeles firm that bears his name could probably whoop me good. Quinn is fit, confident, and pulls no punches. He’s got client relationships older than some of the lawyers in his firm. It’s easy to understand why so many businesses trust him with their high-end, must-win litigation, or why Quinn Emanuel consistently reports some of the highest profits-per-partner of any law firm in the world.

I wrote in this column recently about the power and pitfalls of firm culture, and the need to identify a strong vision for a firm’s culture. John Quinn has that vision, and the tenacity to get what he wants. He famously fell in love with the sushi prepared by a chef in Tokyo. When the sushi industry in Tokyo struggled following the Fukushima reactor meltdown, Quinn helped found a new restaurant for that chef in Los Angeles, down the street from his firm, so he could get his favorite sushi any time he liked.

Not much is typical about John Quinn, or the firm he founded 30 years ago, Quinn Emanuel. When you walk into the firm, you’re greeted by a huge carved wooden shark suspended from the reception area ceiling. The hallways are filled with attorneys, but instead of suits and dresses, it’s shorts and jeans, maybe even firm-branded flip-flops. The dress code is unprecedentedly loose for a mega-firm. Anything goes, reportedly, short of underwear or swimsuits. The only requirement is that every attorney has a suit stashed in their office for the odd emergency courtroom appearance.

And yes, every single attorney is prepared to head to court on a moment’s notice. Quinn Emanuel is the rare litigation-only mega-firm. Where conventional wisdom suggests building a firm around transactional practice groups, which in turn spin off litigation, that wasn’t what Quinn set out to do. “We’re not trying to be all things to all people,” he told me; “We don’t have all these practice groups and claim that we’re the best at all of them. We do just one thing, and we think we’re the best, or among the best at that.”

The firm isn’t afraid to be offbeat with its associates. It experimented with jettisoning its summer associate program in favor of focusing on third-year lateral hires, though it has recently brought that summer program back to a limited degree. Back in 2015, when work seemed to be slowing down, Quinn sent an all-hands email. Instead of beating the bushes and asking the associates to scurry up work, he told them “Enjoy it while it lasts…in the meantime, do some fun stuff.”

The firm’s been unorthodox in its overall business strategies, often to startling effect. It expanded internationally at a time when the very concept of a global litigation firm, by Quinn’s own admission, made no sense. And yet the demand turned out to be there, and cross-border litigation matters flooded in.

The firm also has a remarkable appetite for contingency work compared to its peers. As much as 10 percent of the firm’s hours might be devoted to contingency work at any given time, providing the firm ample opportunity to take part in the upside of its massive litigation cases. Per Quinn, part of that is simply a reflection of the firm’s composition. “We don’t have a corporate practice, a transactional practice. So there may be something to the idea that we’re more comfortable in assessing and living with the risk.”

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Quinn Emanuel made the striking decision early on to never represent any of the major banks or financial institutions. By turning down those huge, reliable clients begging to throw money at them, Quinn Emanuel ended up able to sue those same banks later on, free of any conflicts. The litigation spawned by the 2008 economic meltdown was a bonanza. “You saw the movie ‘The Big Short?’” Quinn asked me. “The last act, which isn’t in the movie, is Quinn Emanuel sues all those banks and recovers over $40 billion.”

“Sadly,” he added, “not on contingency.”

John Quinn struck me as a firm leader who has been trying to carry the best of the so-called “golden era” of law into the modern day. The classic concepts of partnership and collegiality, of valuing the firm over oneself, sound a bit less creaky and musty when he talks about them. Loyalty is key to him, for better and for worse. He’s well known for employing the same admin and driver for the last 20 years. But it’s not all group hugs and kumbayas. Quinn recently made headlines by sending another, less warm and fuzzy all-hands email after the co-chair of Quinn Emanual’s National Trial Practice group announced she was leaving to start her own, competing law firm. Quinn publicly shredded the “deception” and “ingratitude” allegedly displayed by his former partner in light of all the support he claimed the firm had provided her in the past.

If you’re looking for a universal lesson to take away from the Quinn Emanuel experience, it’s that there aren’t any universal lessons. A good firm culture is bespoke. It has to be crafted out of a few good ideas and hopefully not too many bad ones, and it has to fit the people who call that firm home. From the shark in the reception area to the litigators in shorts and flip-flops, there’s a lot about Quinn Emanuel that just doesn’t translate. Some might call it bizarre, but it all somehow works here, in this time and at this place, to the tune of over $5 million in profits per partner a year.

I ended my interview by asking Quinn what he wanted his legacy to be. In his own immortal words:

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“When I’m gone, I don’t give a shit what happens.”

James Goodnow

James Goodnow is an attorney, commentator, and Above the Law columnist. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management and legal communications categories. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by email at jgoodnow@fclaw.com.

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