John Quinn

Appellate Litigation; Commercial Litigation; Investigations and Crisis Management; Public Interest Litigation; Regulatory Enforcement and Litigation; Sports Law; Trials

John C. Quinn represents Fortune 500 companies, tech startups, global law firms, funds and financial institutions, and musicians, actors, and other prominent individuals in high-profile civil litigation, and leads the firm’s efforts in a number of progressive public interest matters.

John argues regularly in federal and state courts, first-chairs trials and arbitration and mediation proceedings, and advises a wide range of clients on their most complex litigation issues. Crain’s New York included John in its annual “40 Under 40” list of business leaders in 2022, and named John a Notable LGBTQIA+ leader in 2024. John has received numerous awards and commendations from the New York Law Journal, the American Lawyer, and Benchmark Litigation. Lawdragon has listed John among the 500 Leading Litigators in America for the past three years in a row.

John was one of the founders of the firm in 2017 and co-leads its recruiting program. He has led many of the firm’s large public interest matters, including the firm’s challenge to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, where John forged a historic settlement agreement with the Florida Department of Education that effectively nullified the most dangerous and discriminatory impacts of the statute. John also represented a student-led LGBTQ+ pride organization in Starkville, Mississippi, where John, along with partner Joshua Matz, led a successful constitutional challenge to the city’s denial of a pride parade permit—and then flew to Starkville to help lead the parade. John also argued the motion to dismiss for the Center for Countering Digital Hate in X Corp v. Center for Countering Digital Hate Inc et al., a lawsuit that alleged CCDH violated X’s terms of service by illegally acquiring data used in researching the prevalence of hate speech on the platform, and secured a full dismissal with prejudice.

John is deeply involved in the firm’s training, mentorship, and professional development programs. John is proud to serve as a member of the board of the Ali Forney Center, the largest LGBTQ+ youth homeless shelter and community center in the country. He is a member of the Federal Bar Council, and co-chairs its diversity taskforce. John has also served as a member of the board of the Federal Bar Foundation, and is an Honorary Overseas Member of the Commercial Bar Association of London.

John recently served as a Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, where he co-taught a class on Startup Law. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was awarded the Joseph H. Beale Prize for excellence in Conflict of Laws and the Addison Brown Prize for an essay on Conflict of Laws. During law school, John served as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard College for a course on constitutional law, assisted Iraqi refugees in need of priority resettlement, collaborated in the development of violence mitigation programs for Sudanese refugee youth in Cairo, and represented clients in criminal proceedings in Roxbury and Dorchester through the Harvard Law School Criminal Justice Institute. John also won a national championship as a member of the Harvard Law School Criminal Justice Institute trial team.