The art world was hit hard by the pandemic, shuttering exhibitions and leaving artists without sufficient funds to afford space to make art. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan responded, filling its blank office space with two Los Angeles artists. "People from all over the world are looking to make art, and are looking for a place to do it," said John Quinn, founder and managing partner of Quinn Emanuel. "We have six floors of space that are mostly empty, so we had this prime idea to offer a well-lit corner office to local artists who need a space to work." The initial response to the program was "astonishing," Quinn said, noting the firm combed through 150 submissions, eventually settling on two artists when it couldn't choose just one. Quinn Emanuel welcomed Los Angeles painters Edgar Ramirez and Molly Segal, providing the artists with dedicated office space and a $15,000 stipend, plus an additional $1,500 stipend for art materials. When the residency ends, the firm will host an exhibition for Ramirez and Segal in December, with the help of curator Alexis Hyde. It will also produce an online mounting of the show. Segal describes her watercolor paintings as California landscapes with a "dystopic" slant, which consider finite resources on the planet and the give-and-take of consumerism. Her work has appeared at the Charlie James Gallery, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Northeastern University, and Zevitas Marcus. She presented a solo exhibition at Luna Anaïs Gallery in Los Angeles in 2021. Ramirez, a native Angeleno, is a painter and muralist who works primarily with themes related to commerce, commodity, labor, geographical territory and identity, according to his bio. Filling the firm's near-empty office with local artists was received with enthusiasm and excitement from lawyers, Quinn said, noting that taking time off work to check on the artists' progress is a welcome interruption in his day. "Art is fundamentally a way of communicating with people on a different level than just purely language," Quinn said. "People have been excited to see what the artists are saying." While the overlap between art and litigation may seem distant at first, Quinn believes there are obvious analogies between the two. "When it comes to litigation and dispute resolution, some things are givens: the type of situations, the people and the personalities. That is what you have to work with. If litigation is an art, those are the materials you have to work with," Quinn explained, adding, "Then you have to make choices. What is your high ground? What is the narrative you want to present? Who are the witnesses you are going to rely on?" Likewise, artists start with simple materials—a blank canvas or a lump of clay—and make choices about what they want to present and the message they want to communicate, he said. Quinn, an avid art collector and artist, has shared his collection with the Los Angeles office for many years. Over a Zoom call, he motions to the walls of his own office, filled from end to end and desk to ceiling with paintings and photographs. He gets up from his desk and ambles around the office, pointing to just a few pieces from his collection: a computer-generated image on aluminum that resembles an abstract watercolor painting; an African piece in the shape of an elephant, crafted from everyday materials such as toothbrushes and keyboard keys; and an ever-fitting piece for a law firm, a bright red canvas with the words "Expensive Advice." For Quinn himself, his artwork has often manifested from his life experiences as a litigator. He turns the camera to another room in the office: "War Room." It's not a room in fact, but a diorama that Quinn designed and constructed over the course of six months. He describes the piece as a "highly detailed diorama of a conference room, with a Dali-esque clock smeared along the wall, filled with boxes, papers, empty Coke cans, pizza boxes and all kinds of debris associated with a trial engine room." He continues, "There are no human beings. It's all artifacts and objects that lawyers work with and create. It's an impressive atmosphere. You can almost smell what it must be like to be in an oppressive, claustrophobic environment." It's the ordeal of a multiday or multimonth trial captured in a piece of art. Quinn adds, "In 10 years, lawyers will look at it and say, 'What is this?' It will be a thing of the past."