Luke Nikas.

Luke Nikas, a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, will work his last day at that firm this week; he starts at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan next week.

“It really comes down to that I'm at a point in my career where I can choose the best platform for my practice,” Nikas said.

Quinn Emanuel offers the right fit for him now, explained Nikas, who represents the Andy Warhol Foundation and has represented 9/11 workers who cleaned up downtown Manhattan, the former president of Knoedler Gallery Ann Freedman, the Powerhouse Art Foundation, and the Peter Beard Studio, among other clients.

Nikas said wants to handle one-off, big-ticket litigation for clients that need highly skilled lawyering for a particular crises or claim. The 720-lawyer Quinn Emanuel has the bandwidth and business strategy to serve as a platform for that kind of practice, Nikas said.

At 310-lawyer Boies Schiller, there has been a focus on developing ”core clients,” according to firm founder David Boies. The legendary litigator, now in his 70s, told Bloomberg News in October that as part of a succession plan, his firm has formed and expanded an executive committee and is doubling down on “core client work,” such as ongoing representations for corporations, that give the firm a “stable base.”

Moving from Boies Schiller to Quinn Emanuel, Nikas is following a path another former Boies Schiller partner took more than a decade ago. In 2006, Philippe Selendy moved from Boies Schiller to Quinn Emanuel, where he went on to win more than $25 billion in settlements in litigation related to the financial crisis and multiple awards from The American Lawyer.

“Luke is an excellent lawyer,” Boies said in a statement. “He's going to be successful wherever he is and I wish him all the best. He had an opportunity at Boies Schiller Flexner to learn, to develop, and I look forward to seeing what he accomplishes.”

For his part, Nikas stressed that his interest in moving to Quinn Emanuel began long before Boies emerged in recent months as the subject of intense criticism stemming from his representation of disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein. His move was not related to those events, Nikas said.

Since November, Boies and his firm have been the subject of a slew of negative news stories and a racketeering lawsuit—all stemming in part from a report in The New Yorker describing Boies' efforts to derail The New York Times' reporting on Weinstein's allegedly sexual predatory actions. After The New Yorker report, the Times angrily ended its own client relationship with Boies and his firm, which was actively representing the newspaper in other matters.

The newly filed racketeering lawsuit claims Boies Schiller and several other law firms were key participants in an alleged scheme to cover up widespread sexual misconduct on the part of Weinstein. Notably, the lawsuit does not name Boies Schiller or the other firms as defendants.

In October, prior to all the Weinstein fallout, another Boies Schiller partner, Michael Merley, also left the firm. Merley went to work for an asset-management company, Oak Grove Capital, in New York City. Having worked at Boies Schiller for a decade, Merley characterized his time there in glowing terms.

“My colleagues, my former clients, the matters I worked on were challenging but rewarding. They were the precise opportunities so many young lawyers strive to one day have,” he said in an email.

But Merley wrote that he made a decision to leave the legal business.

“Approximately a year ago, Oak Grove Capital began to recruit me to switch my line of work. I ultimately realized that I had been given the ability to, in essence, go back in time to 1997 when BSF was started, and to join a dynamic, growing, entrepreneurial firm all over again—but this time in different industry,” Merley said.