'We never had a business plan': How Quinn Emanuel became a $2bn law firm by doing one thing well
Quinn Emanuel co-founder John Quinn on building a global litigation powerhouse without a business plan - and why focus beats scale.
Contents
When John Quinn and three colleagues left a small New York firm to strike out on their own in 1986, they didn't have any grand aspirations to build the world's top disputes-only law firm.
Quinn had opened a one-lawyer outpost in Los Angeles for the firm they worked for, on the assumption that work would follow. It didn’t. "They thought they would have a lot of work in LA. Turns out they didn’t," Quinn recalls. "So we really had to kind of scramble to keep ourselves busy."
That scramble led to the founding of Quinn Emanuel and, initially at least, there was no plan to specialise. "At the beginning, we didn’t really know this would be a litigation-only firm," Quinn says. "It wasn’t for some time that we realised that this was a really powerful model and decided that we would really stick with that."
Listen to the full-length interview on the podcast. Episode page with links here.
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The niche full-service firms wouldn’t touch
Quinn Emanuel’s litigation-only model emerged from a practical observation about conflicts - as well as a gap in the market.
Quinn says the firm made a "deliberate decision" to go after claims against the world’s largest commercial banks, an area most full-service firms avoided. "Full service firms wouldn’t touch claims against those banks because of course they have corporate transactional practices," he says. "Partners in those practices really want to do their deal work so they’re not going to litigate against the Goldman Sachses of the world."
That created "an unmet need in the marketplace," Quinn says, and the firm filled it. "That’s turned out to be a very good niche for us actually."
Outside of that, Quinn Emanuel has long overlapped with the biggest firms on clients. "We represent a lot of very large institutions, such as Google or Qualcomm or very large hedge funds like Citadel," Quinn says. But on banks, Quinn Emanuel’s positioning was deliberately sharper: "The one area where we are consistently up against big law firms and big law firm clients are the world’s largest money centre banks."
That clarity helped in marketing and in recruiting. "Our message was a very simple one," he says. "We do one thing and we think we’re the best or among the best at that." Full-service firms, by contrast, "all kind of sound the same."
Our message was a very simple one - we do one thing and we think we’re the best or among the best at that.
A focus that made the firm easier to run
The disputes-only model also has operational advantages.
At full-service firms, Quinn says, specialisation can make partners strangers to each other’s work. "Deal lawyers don’t really understand what litigators do and vice versa," he says. At Quinn Emanuel, "we’re all litigators, so we understood each other in our practices."
That cohesion mattered as the firm expanded. Quinn points to milestone growth moves: building a major patent litigation practice after opening in Silicon Valley in the 1990s, opening New York in 2001, then London in 2008, just before the financial crisis gave the office early momentum.
"That was a good calling card for us when we first opened in London and we were seen as kind of an anti-bank practice," he says, though the office is "diversified far beyond that now."
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Addleshaw Goddard | £52,000 | £56,000 | £100,000 |
| Akin | £60,000 | £65,000 | £174,418 |
| A&O Shearman | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Ashurst | £57,000 | £62,000 | £140,000 |
| Baker McKenzie | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| Bird & Bird | £47,000 | £52,000 | £102,000 |
| Bristows | £46,000 | £50,000 | £88,000 |
| Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner | £50,000 | £55,000 | £115,000 |
| Burges Salmon | £47,000 | £49,000 | £72,000 |
| Charles Russell Speechlys | £50,000 | £53,000 | £88,000 |
| Cleary Gottlieb | £62,500 | £67,500 | £164,500 |
| Clifford Chance | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Clyde & Co | £47,000 | £49,500 | £85,000 |
| CMS | £50,000 | £55,000 | £120,000 |
| Cooley | £55,000 | £60,000 | £157,000 |
| Davis Polk | £65,000 | £70,000 | £170,000 |
| Debevoise | £55,000 | £60,000 | £173,000 |
| Dechert | £55,000 | £61,000 | £165,000 |
| Dentons | £50,000 | £54,000 | £100,000 |
| DLA Piper | £52,000 | £57,000 | £130,000 |
| Eversheds Sutherland | £46,000 | £50,000 | £110,000 |
| Farrer & Co | £47,000 | £49,000 | £88,000 |
| Fieldfisher | £48,500 | £52,000 | £95,000 |
| Freshfields | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Fried Frank | £55,000 | £60,000 | £175,000 |
| Gibson Dunn | £60,000 | £65,000 | £180,000 |
| Goodwin Procter | £55,000 | £60,000 | £175,000 |
| Gowling WLG | £48,500 | £53,500 | £105,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| HFW | £50,000 | £54,000 | £103,500 |
| Hill Dickinson | £43,000 | £45,000 | £80,000 |
| Hogan Lovells | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Irwin Mitchell | £43,000 | £45,000 | £76,000 |
| Jones Day | £56,000 | £65,000 | £160,000 |
| K&L Gates | £50,000 | £55,000 | £115,000 |
| Kennedys | £43,000 | £46,000 | £85,000 |
| King & Spalding | £55,000 | £60,000 | £165,000 |
| Kirkland & Ellis | £60,000 | £65,000 | £174,418 |
| Latham & Watkins | £60,000 | £65,000 | £174,418 |
| Linklaters | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Macfarlanes | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Mayer Brown | £55,000 | £60,000 | £150,000 |
| McDermott Will & Schulte | £65,000 | £70,000 | £174,418 |
| Milbank | £65,000 | £70,000 | £174,418 |
| Mills & Reeve | £45,000 | £47,000 | £82,000 |
| Mischon de Reya | £47,500 | £52,500 | £95,000 |
| Norton Rose Fulbright | £50,000 | £55,000 | £135,000 |
| Orrick | £55,000 | £60,000 | £160,000 |
| Osborne Clarke | £54,500 | £56,000 | £94,000 |
| Paul Hastings | £60,000 | £68,000 | £173,000 |
| Paul Weiss | £55,000 | £60,000 | £180,000 |
| Penningtons Manches Cooper | £48,000 | £50,000 | £83,000 |
| Pinsent Masons | £49,500 | £54,000 | £105,000 |
| Quinn Emanuel | n/a | n/a | £180,000 |
| Reed Smith | £50,000 | £55,000 | £125,000 |
| Ropes & Gray | £60,000 | £65,000 | £165,000 |
| RPC | £46,000 | £50,000 | £90,000 |
| Shoosmiths | £43,000 | £45,000 | £105,000 |
| Sidley Austin | £60,000 | £65,000 | £175,000 |
| Simmons & Simmons | £52,000 | £57,000 | £120,000 |
| Simpson Thacher | n/a | n/a | £178,000 |
| Skadden | £58,000 | £63,000 | £173,000 |
| Slaughter and May | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Squire Patton Boggs | £47,000 | £50,000 | £110,000 |
| Stephenson Harwood | £50,000 | £55,000 | £100,000 |
| Sullivan & Cromwell | £65,000 | £70,000 | £174,418 |
| Taylor Wessing | £50,000 | £55,000 | £115,000 |
| TLT | £44,000 | £47,500 | £85,000 |
| Travers Smith | £55,000 | £60,000 | £130,000 |
| Trowers & Hamlins | £45,000 | £49,000 | £80,000 |
| Vinson & Elkins | £60,000 | £65,000 | £173,077 |
| Watson Farley & Williams | £50,000 | £55,000 | £102,000 |
| Weightmans | £34,000 | £36,000 | £70,000 |
| Weil Gotshal & Manges | £60,000 | £65,000 | £170,000 |
| White & Case | £62,000 | £67,000 | £175,000 |
| Willkie Farr & Gallagher | £60,000 | £65,000 | £170,000 |
| Withers | £47,000 | £52,000 | £95,000 |
| Womble Bond Dickinson | £43,000 | £45,000 | £80,000 |
Rank | Law Firm | Revenue | Profit per Equity Partner (PEP) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DLA Piper* | £3,010,000,000 | £2,400,000 |
| 2 | Clifford Chance | £2,300,000,000 | £2,040,000 |
| 3 | A&O Shearman | £2,200,000,000 | £2,200,000 |
| 4 | Hogan Lovells | £2,150,000,000 | £2,200,000 |
| 5 | Freshfields | £2,120,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 6 | Linklaters | £2,100,000,000 | £1,900,000 |
| 7 | Norton Rose Fulbright* | £1,800,000,000 | £1,100,000 |
| 8 | CMS** | £1,620,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 9 | Herbert Smith Freehills | £1,300,000,000 | £1,300,000 |
| 10 | Ashurst | £961,000,000 | £1,300,000 |
| 11 | Clyde & Co | £844,000,000 | £739,000 |
| 12 | Eversheds Sutherland | £749,000,000 | £1,300,000 |
| 13 | BCLP* | £661,000,000 | £748,000 |
| 14 | Pinsent Masons | £649,000,000 | £793,000 |
| 15 | Slaughter and May*** | £625,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 16 | Simmons & Simmons | £574,000,000 | £1,076,000 |
| 17 | Bird & Bird** | £545,000,000 | £696,000 |
| 18 | Addleshaw Goddard | £495,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 19 | Taylor Wessing | £480,000,000 | £915,000*** |
| 20 | Osborne Clarke** | £456,000,000 | £771,000 |
| 21 | Womble Bond Dickinson | £448,000,000 | £556,000 |
| 22 | DWF | £435,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 23 | Fieldfisher | £407,000,000 | £966,000 |
| 24 | Kennedys | £384,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 25 | DAC Beachcroft | £325,000,000 | £700,000 |
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Growth without the corporate playbook
The firm's growth strategy, Quinn says, has never followed a traditional corporate approach.
"We’ve never had a business plan at our firm, at any time, full stop," he says. "Our business plan always was to identify and recruit the best possible lawyers wherever, and pursue good opportunities wherever we saw them."
That sits in contrast with his early impressions of the Magic Circle in London. "They had these business plans - three-year, five-year plans, whole layers of people," he says. "You’d go to any self-respecting large English law firm and there in reception would be a rack of multi-coloured brochures. This was all a revelation to me."
He’s not convinced the effort pays off. "I do wonder whether there’s a lot of effort that goes into those types of marketing and ‘planning’ activities that may or may not really bear fruit," he says.
Our business plan always was to identify and recruit the best possible lawyers and pursue good opportunities wherever we saw them.
What US litigation has that the UK doesn’t
Quinn also offers a reminder that US and UK litigation only look similar from a distance. When he first explored London, he assumed it would be straightforward. "They speak English here. They use words like common law," he says. "They call discovery disclosure."
He later realised "I didn’t have a clue. The process, the procedure, the legal culture is so fundamentally different." He credits London founding partners Richard East and Sue Prevezer with helping him understand what it would take to succeed in the UK market.
Among the biggest practical differences he cites is depositions. "I can send out a notice of deposition and have the CEO, chairman of the board, whoever, show up in my office, be put under oath, be videotaped while I ask questions," Quinn says. "That is super powerful."
That evidence-gathering tool can also force settlement decisions sooner. It "helps both sides to handicap the values, strengths, and weaknesses of their cases and come to resolution if one’s possible."
Costs are different too. The default in the US is "each side pays their own costs, it’s not a loser pays system," Quinn says - a structure that makes it easier to bring "marginal claims" than in England.
'A really stupid business'
For all the complexity of elite-level legal work, Quinn thinks the business underneath it remains simple.
"Law is a really stupid business in some ways," he says. "We’re taking people with legal talent and putting them together with people with legal problems and charging for their time by the hour."
It’s also not capital intensive. "We don’t really have any assets," Quinn says, aside from leases. "Your only assets - the only things that matter - are the talent and wits and judgement of your lawyers."
That simplicity makes current market shifts easier to read. Quinn sees "greater concentration - the strong are getting stronger," driven partly by laterals and the "new" phenomenon of paying star partners "north of 20 million a year." Not many firms can afford it, he says, and the result is "the richer going to get richer."
Compensation trends are shifting too. The traditional lockstep partnership model, he argues, is hard to sustain because portable books can be "picked off" if partners don’t feel paid "commensurate with their profitability contribution."
It's a stupid business. We take people with legal talent and put them together with people with legal problems and charge for their time by the hour.
The trait Quinn thinks matters most
Asked what makes a great lawyer, Quinn doesn’t talk about charisma or credentials. "The single most important thing, frankly, is judgement," he says - the ability to predict how a judge or jury will react, and to "distance yourself from your own prejudices and the influences of your client."
The second ingredient is less glamorous: work. "Doing this at the highest level is super labour intensive and super demanding," he says. "You have to be prepared to sweat the details and burn the midnight oil."
If Quinn Emanuel’s origin story has a through-line, it’s that the firm didn’t win by trying to do everything. It won by finding an unmet need, repeating a simple message, and building a culture around one craft.
| Firm | London office since | Known for in London |
|---|---|---|
| Akin | 1997 | Restructuring, funds |
| Baker McKenzie | 1961 | Finance, capital markets, TMT |
| Davis Polk | 1972 | Leveraged finance, corporate/M&A |
| Gibson Dunn | 1979 | Private equity, arbitration, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Goodwin | 2008 | Private equity, funds, life sciences |
| Kirkland & Ellis | 1994 | Private equity, funds, restructuring |
| Latham & Watkins | 1990 | Finance, private equity, capital markets |
| McDermott Will & Schulte | 1998 | Finance, funds, healthcare |
| Milbank | 1979 | Finance, capital markets, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Paul Hastings | 1997 | Leveraged finance, structured finance, infrastructure |
| Paul Weiss | 2001 | Private equity, leveraged finance |
| Quinn Emanuel | 2008 | Litigation |
| Sidley Austin | 1974 | Leveraged finance, capital markets, corporate/M&A |
| Simpson Thacher | 1978 | Leveraged finance, private equity, funds |
| Skadden | 1988 | Finance, corporate/M&A, arbitration |
| Sullivan & Cromwell | 1972 | Corporate/M&A, restructuring, capital markets |
| Weil | 1996 | Restructuring, private equity, leverage finance |
| White & Case | 1971 | Capital markets, arbitration, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Law firm | Type | First-year salary |
|---|---|---|
| White & Case | US firm | £32,000 |
| Stephenson Harwood | International | £30,000 |
| A&O Shearman | Magic Circle | £28,000 |
| Charles Russell Speechlys | International | £28,000 |
| Freshfields | Magic Circle | £28,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills | Silver Circle | £28,000 |
| Hogan Lovells | International | £28,000 |
| Linklaters | Magic Circle | £28,000 |
| Mishcon de Reya | International | £28,000 |
| Norton Rose Fulbright | International | £28,000 |
This is a condensed version of our full length interview with John Quinn on The Non-Billable Podcast. View the episode page here.
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A&O Shearman | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Clifford Chance | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Linklaters | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Slaughter and May | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A&O Shearman | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Clifford Chance | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Linklaters | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Slaughter and May | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashurst | £57,000 | £62,000 | £140,000 |
| Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner | £50,000 | £55,000 | £115,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| Macfarlanes | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Travers Smith | £55,000 | £60,000 | £130,000 |
| Firm | Merger year | Known for in London |
|---|---|---|
| BCLP | 2018 | Real estate, corporate/M&A, litigation |
| DLA Piper | 2005 | Corporate/M&A, real estate, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Eversheds Sutherland | 2017 | Corporate/M&A, finance |
| Hogan Lovells | 2011 | Litigation, regulation, finance |
| Mayer Brown | 2002 | Finance, capital markets, real estate |
| Norton Rose Fulbright | 2013 | Energy, resources and infrastructure, insurance, finance |
| Reed Smith | 2007 | Shipping, finance, TMT |
| Squire Patton Boggs | 2011 | Corporate/M&A, pensions, TMT |
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashurst | £57,000 | £62,000 | £140,000 |
| Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner | £50,000 | £55,000 | £115,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| Macfarlanes | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Travers Smith | £55,000 | £60,000 | £130,000 |
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