This week in the Law Firm Disrupted: Quinn Emanuel balances new school and old school. And an overview of Vannin Capital's travails. What do you want to hear about? Email me here. Sign up here to receive this newsletter in your inbox.

Dead Trees and Bitcoins

I'm somewhat old-school in my reading habits. Particularly on the weekend, when the Sunday edition of The New York Times still lands with a thunk on my front walk. In the business pages, between smart reads on WeWork's Adam Neumann's golden parachute and Netflix's fight with theater chains over the Irishman, a new ad buy caught my attention the other day. Quinn Emanuel had shelled out for not one, but two full pages to draw attention to a recent report declaring it the most feared firm in litigation.

That's a significant play for old-school eyeballs like mine. The paper's ad guide tells me that a full-page black and white ad in the national business section runs for a little over $200K. I don't get the WSJ's Weekend Edition, so you can tell me if Quinn is promoting its status there too.

Anyway, I was really struck by the breadth of the firm's marketing strategy when I saw the news yesterday that it had started taking Bitcoin as a payment. That's new school. Raise your hand if you read the dead-tree NYT and are champing at the bit to start paying your lawyers in Bitcoin. Anyone?

But putting the two together does seem to be a solid way to diversify a firm's client base (like Quinn really needs the help.) Keep the stodgy old-timers abreast of the firm's litigation prowess through a big print buy, and lure the fintech upstarts in through Bitcoin.

And get the rules right: Experts said there are ethical implications for playing in the Bitcoin sandbox. Quinn, however, gets the benefit of the doubt.

"With Quinn Emanuel's sophistication and experience, I expect them to do it correctly," Burns, Figa & Will shareholder Herrick Lidstone told my colleague Sam Stokes.

U.S. law firms have one fewer commercial litigation funder to turn to now that Vannin Capital has pulled up stakes. I'd been hearing for a little while that some funders were bound to fall off the map. Vannin carries on as a U.K.-based outlet, but it's certainly had a precipitous slide, particularly because at one point it was poised to join the small club of publicly traded funding shops.

Let's review. Founded in 2010, Vannin had hoped to float itself on the London Stock Exchange in 2018, at one point seeking to go public at a value of £1bn ($1.29 billion). Vannin's former chair, Allen & Overy veteran David Morley, said that by issuing £70 million ($91.2 million) of new shares the firm was "aiming at the top end of the market." But that never happened. The firm scrapped the IPO last October, pointing to volatile market conditions.

A sale to SoftBank subsidiary Fortress Investment Group in September was promoted as an opportunity for both investment groups to thrive. But subsequent report revealed that Vannin was short on cash and already in debt to Fortress. About a month after the deal was announced, the names of Vannin's personnel around the world vanished from the company's website. They later returned, but without the U.S. and Germany.

Fortress confirmed the closures on Friday, pointing to "synergies" with its existing legal assets business. The company already had a team at work in the U.S., lending money to law firms and funders and also investing in cases. That's no solace for Vannin's own employees, who were laid off rather than given the opportunity to join Fortress's team.

Vannin's struggles are a useful counterbalance to the glossy reports others in the industry are producing that show steadily growing demand for third-party litigation capital. That's not to say that the service is not appealing to law firms and big businesses. But in an increasingly competitive marketplace, where some funders feel pressured to take less of a return just so they can ensure a place to place their capital, all it takes is a couple bad bets to get the lights turned off.

In the News

➤➤One selling point of litigation finance is its ability to boost firms' operating capital. Combine that infusion with partner contributions and undistributed income, and firms are finding they've got less need to rely on their bankers. That's a good sign, according to the experts consulted by my colleague Lizzy McLellan. Firms are "much more favorably positioned" now than they were before the Great Recession, notes Michael McKenney, managing director of Citi Private Bank's Law Firm Group.

➤➤You can't just snap your fingers and fill a CMO role at a firm. My colleague Patrick Smith reports that Nixon Peabody is the latest firm to demonstrate the search process takes time: 10 months over there. That's not an outlier; elsewhere vacancies have lasted for between six and 17 months.

➤➤Finally, over at the ABA Journal, Barnes & Thornberg insurance recovery co-chair Charles Edwards has harsh words for leaders who are all talk and no action on crucial issues like diversity, wellness and other pressing issues in the profession:

At best, we've become the "excellent sheep" identified by William Deresiewicz in his book by the same title. People whose only real skill, in Deresiewicz's words, is that they can "climb the greasy pole of whatever hierarchy they decide to attach themselves to," he writes. "At worst, we've become self-important takers who favored me over you, more over less, and shiny objects over personal connections.

You'll hear from me again next Thursday! Thanks again for reading, and please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]. Sign up here to receive The Law Firm Disrupted as a weekly email.