Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP

Firm Details: 

Firm Chairman & Founder: John B Quinn

Global Co-Managing Partners: Michael Carlinsky, William Burck

Number of partners worldwide: 281

Number of other lawyers worldwide: 735

Firm Overview: 

With 1000+ litigators and arbitration practitioners, Quinn Emanuel is the largest and most successful litigation and arbitration law firm in the world. The firm has 35 offices in several countries including the UK, Germany, France, UAE, Qatar, China, Japan, and Australia. Quinn Emanuel represents many of the world’s most successful companies in their most important lawsuits and arbitrations.

The firm’s partners have tried over 2,500 trials and arbitrations and have won 86% of them. It is believed the firm’s proven track record leads to quicker and more favorable settlements. Namely, Quinn Emanuel has obtained four 10-figure verdicts, seven 9-figure jury verdicts, fifty-one 9-figure settlements, and twenty 10-figure settlements.

“Most Feared Law Firm Globally”—Based on a survey of over 350 major corporations, Quinn Emanuel has, for over ten years, been recognized by BTI Consulting as one of the “Fearsome Foursome,” an elite group of law firms that “clients don’t want to face on the other side.” For four years running we were named the most feared law firm in the world.

The American Lawyer awarded Quinn Emanuel “Litigation Department of the Year” at its 2023 Industry Awards. This award recognizes Quinn Emanuel as the best litigation firm in the U.S.

We only do one thing—disputes—and we are the best at it. We win.

Main Areas of Practice: 

• Intellectual Property & Related Antitrust Litigation: The firm's largest practice area by far is intellectual property litigation. Its regular IP clients include technology leaders such as Cisco, Google, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Symantec, Qualcomm, Motorola, Roche, Samsung, SONY and many others. We have the most successful and largest patent litigation practice in the world; more than 150 of our lawyers have science or engineering degrees.We have litigated cases regarding automated driving, CRISPR gene editing, and other cutting-edge technologies. We have been involved in the largest multi-jurisdiction patent disputes including the “smartphone wars,” where we were the defender of the Android operating system, and the Apple v. Qualcomm litigation. We have the leading patent litigation practice in Germany, the second most important IP jurisdiction in the world, and a specialized ITC practice team in Washington, D.C. Thus, we can offer clients representation in the most important patent dispute venues under one roof.
• International Arbitration: Our top international arbitration practitioners in Switzerland, London, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Hong Kong have collectively conducted arbitrations before all leading arbitral authorities—including the largest ICC arbitration ever. Global Arbitration Review consistently ranks us as one of the leading firms for international arbitration in the world, (number 4 in the world in 2023) and our arbitration specialists are rated among the world’s best by Chambers, Legal 500, and Law360.
• White Collar and Corporate Investigations: We have one of the top white-collar defense practices in the world.Over 25 partners are former Assistant United States Attorneys—two of whom were the United States Attorney in their districts as top DOJ officials.We have an international practice with partners located in 29 global offices, and have represented clients in the United States and throughout the world, including Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East.Much of our work has been done on behalf of foreign companies and individuals whose activities have drawn the attention of U.S. regulators and prosecutors.Our global resources, coupled with our unique cross-border experience, allow us to effectively and efficiently navigate related criminal investigations in multiple jurisdictions. We were named the “Most Impressive Investigations Practice of the Year” by Global Investigations Review, the leading legal periodical covering global white-collar investigations, and twice named “White Collar Group of the Year” by Law360.
• Finance Litigation: We have the preeminent finance industry litigation practice in the world.We have the ability to be adverse to all major money center banks.We have unequaled experience in disputes regarding bankruptcy, restructuring, and complex financial products, such as derivatives, swaps, commodities, futures and options, RMBS, and CDOs. We were named “Banking Group of the Year” by Law360 four out of the last five years. In 17 multi-billion dollar RMBS cases we brought on behalf of FHFA, we recovered approximately $23 billion for U.S. taxpayers in settlements from major investment banks.We were also appointed co-lead counsel in the credit default swaps antitrust case, which alleged that major Wall Street banks conspired with Markit and ISDA to boycott the exchange trading of CDS.After two years of litigation, we obtained a settlement of more than $1.86 billion, even though both the DOJ and EC had investigated and failed to bring charges.
• Class Action Litigation: Twice voted “Class Action Group of the Year” by Law360 for successes in antitrust, securities, consumer fraud, and wage and hour class action litigation on both defense and plaintiff sides.In the past three years, we defeated more than 20 class actions with prejudice at the pleading stage and prevailed in more than two dozen others by defeating class certification, obtaining summary judgment, or resolving the case with no monetary payment.We are one of the few firms to have actually tried multiple class actions to verdict.
• Appellate Practice: our Appellate Practice, headed by nationally recognized advocate Kathleen Sullivan, is one of the best in the U.S. and enables us to protect our clients’ wins and turn around losses.We have overturned six 8- and 9-figure verdicts.We have been named to The National Law Journal’s “Appellate Hot List” eight out of the last nine years and recognized as “Appellate Group of the Year” by Law360.

Languages: 

Afrikaans; Albanian; American Sign Language; Arabic; Armenian; Bengali; Bulgarian; Cantonese; Chinese; English; Estonian; Farsi; Finnish; French; Fukienese; German; Greek; Gujarati; Hebrew; Hindi; Italian; Japanese; Korean; Latin; Lithuanian; Mandarin; Polish; Portuguese; Punjabi; Romanian; Russian; Serbian; Sinhala; Spanish; Swedish; Tagalog; Thai; Turkish; Urdu; Welsh; Yoruba

Representative Clients: 

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
• AIG
• Alibaba
• Bain Capital
• Bank of China
• Barrick Gold
• Carlyle
• CATL (largest EV battery producer in the world)
• Charter Communications
• Citadel
• Elon Musk
• Express Scripts
• General Motors
• Google
• Hyundai Motors
• IBM
• KKR
• Netflix
• Nvidia
• Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia
• Qualcomm
• Rio Tinto
• Samsung Electronics
• Softbank and Softbank Vision Fund
• Tesla
• TPG