Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan may have its roots in California, but the firm's biggest office is in New York.

Of late, it's also been most often in the news. In January, 10 New York-based partners left to form Selendy & Gay, and last week, a trio of products liability lawyers led by Sheila Birnbaum decamped for Dechert. For a firm used to adding, not losing, lateral partners, the departures were a blow.

At the same time, Quinn Emanuel saw record revenue last year, and boasted the second-highest profits per partner—$4.735 million—of any Am Law 100 firm.

Lit Daily editor Jenna Greene caught up with the office's two new co-managing partners, Michael Carlinsky and Rick Werder, who took on the job two months ago after Peter Calamari became the firm's presiding partner.

They discussed their goals as leaders, the mix of work at the office, how they train their associates, and how they've moved on after the departures.

Jenna Greene: Tell me a bit about the history of the New York office.

Michael Carlinsky: I've been here from the beginning—I'm one of the original founders of the New York office. We opened the office officially in 2001. It started with four partners and three or four associates. We now have roughly 300 lawyers in New York alone.

New York has grown to be the largest office in the firm by a wide margin. When I joined the firm [from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe], we had about 140 lawyers in the entire firm—Los Angeles mainly, a small fledgling office in San Francisco, and then New York.

The most rapid growth started around 2004 or 2005, as we were able to recruit some very significant, high-profile lateral partners like Rick Werder, Susheel Kirpalani, Andy Rossman, Ed DeFranco, Steve Neuwirth and others. From there, it's safe to say we've been on a hockey-stick like trajectory, straight up. Last year was a record year in revenues.

JG: What do your duties as co-managing partners of the New York office entail? And what are some of your goals?

Rick Werder: We are not a very heavily-managed firm. The philosophy of the firm historically has been to try to attract really good lawyers and manage the conflicts, and then the litigation practice will be successful. John Quinn obviously has a very significant role in the management of the firm and in providing direction.

I think Mike and myself and Jen Barrett, who is working very closely with us on trying to manage the practice in New York, are picking up on that and really just trying to support the great talent that we have collected in this office. We view our roles really as helping our partners maximize their talents and helping our associates to develop their skill sets, and trying to provide some energy, some focus, some direction from time to time. But 'managing' is probably not the right word for what it is we're doing here.

Michael Carlinsky: We've been very fortunate that for the last 14 years Peter Calamari has done an outstanding job managing the New York office. As Rick and I have been asked to take over as co-managing partners, I think Rick has described it well: This firm, and the New York office, really runs very well by itself. It doesn't need a lot of intervention from management. That's been part of the firm's philosophy.

In terms of goals, I think it's to continue to do the outstanding legal work that we're doing, continue to see our associates develop under whatever guidance and support we can provide to them, continue to see the firm involved in the most high-profile, the most significant, the most interesting cases, frankly in the world, and continue to work in an environment where people truly care about one another, people truly support one another, and people truly enjoy the practice of law. These are the things we've done to date, and these are things that we want to continue doing in the future.

JG: Does the New York office have a different mix of cases than the rest of the firm?

Rick Werder: I don't know that the mix of cases is that much different in New York than elsewhere. We have many significant cases arising in the financial services world, structured finance, rate and market manipulation, restructuring, etcetera many of which involve claims against the major banks.

IP is now about 25 percent at least of [the] practice firm-wide, and the life sciences IP practice is based in New York.

Michael Carlinsky: We really do follow the one-firm model, meaning that we have many, many cases that are staffed in New York and that may have originated in the New York office, but have lawyers in other offices working on them too. The converse is true as well.

JG: What are some current cases that lawyers in New York are working on?

Rick Werder: In the financial services arena, Dan Brockett has a number of pending class actions where he is lead counsel or co-lead counsel in cases involving antitrust theories, largely against major financial institutions involved in making various sorts of markets. On the general commercial litigation front, we do a lot of work with IBM. We have a substantial case in Texas pending for IBM.

Michael Carlinsky: We represent Express Scripts, which is the largest pharmaceutical benefits manager, in a lawsuit pending in the Southern District of New York. It's a $13 billion claim brought by Anthem.

In the securities fraud arena, for example, we are defending a Brazilian company called Odebrecht in securities litigation. There are two 10b-5 cases pending in the Southern District of New York.

In New York State Supreme Court, we continue to be very actively involved in representing clients in the RMBS putback litigation. We continue to be very active in a matter involving Natixis [Real Estate Capital], which is the defendant in a very significant putback case.

We're doing some very significant cases for various private equity firms. In the pharmaceutical patent area, we represent a number of very significant brands. That practice is largely run out of New York, headed up by Nick Cerrito, Peter Armenio and Ray Nimrod. We have developed a very significant practice in Brazil, representing Brazilian companies in white collar and civil matters in the U.S. In fact, we have developed broad Latin American practice.

JG: Are there certain practice areas that you have your eye on for growth?

Michael Carlinsky: As a firm, we've been very successful to date by hiring great lawyers who are generalists. As I look across the firm and think about practice groups or areas where we might be lacking, there aren't really any that are obvious to me. We've always been opportunistic. If an opportunity presents itself—as opposed to us identifying a particular niche or particular practice area—we've always gone after it, and that's worked for us.

In terms of growth areas, white collar/investigations has been a big growth area, where Bill Burck, Juan Morillo and John Potter have really done a fantastic job on both coasts building the practice into one of the leading international practices. In China, we have Sam Williamson and a large team of Chinese lawyers handling all types of white collar matters. For example, we represented soccer federation FIFA and Conmebol in global corruption matters, we did the internal investigation for investment bank BTG Pactual in Brazil and have represented a number of Swiss banks in various matters before the Department of Justice. We are looking to significantly expand this practice in New York.

JG: Do you have summer associates coming in this year?

Michael Carlinsky: We had a group of five that started [May 21]. I was just out to lunch with one of my summer mentees. A number of partners in the New York office have summer associate mentees that we're responsible for mentoring, taking to lunch, welcoming to the firm, answering questions, helping them with assignments.

Rick Werder: We had a hiatus where we were deciding whether to continue with the summer associate program. We've gone back to it. My expectation is next year, we'll see the numbers increasing.

JG: Does the firm offer any unique training for associates?

Michael Carlinsky: It's probably one of our proudest accomplishments as a firm. For us, it starts from the top. John Quinn's vision is that as a trial firm—with a huge emphasis on trial lawyers—we want to start training our young lawyers at the earliest stage possible for their development as in-court lawyers who have the skill set, experience and confidence to try cases and argue motions.

John really sets the tone here. You'll periodically get emails from John with different ideas that we as a firm can implement that will give younger lawyers early-on, stand-up experience. That philosophy funnels down within the firm. I think it's just part of our overall culture. The way we think about younger lawyers is, we want them to develop as quickly as they can.

Rick has probably had 30 trials since he's joined the firm and I have probably had 20. In every case, there's been at least one associate who has had a stand-up role.

Last week, I had a motion to dismiss argument in New York State Supreme Court, and one of my associates who had been working on the case, she stood up and argued the opposition to a motion to dismiss against three senior partners from three of New York's most venerable law firms. And that's not the exception to the rule here. It's much more the rule.

With respect to training, we have an in-house trial advocacy program that all associates at a junior level have to participate in, and then we have an advanced trial advocacy program that's available to more senior associates later on in their careers. We make it mandatory because this way, we are assured that no matter how busy people are, those associates will be given the time away from their active cases so they can be part of those programs.

We bring in some outside experts to help us, we use the firm's top trial lawyers to help teach the program. It's usually four or five days, and it culminates with a jury trial, where we bring in folks from the outside to serve as jurors. The program is taken very seriously. It's an incredible teaching and learning experience for the associates.

Rick Werder: We should really give a shout-out to one of our senior partners from Los Angeles, Steve Madison. He's a former AUSA and has been running this program for us for years. We just had one a few weeks ago where we had maybe 30 or 35 associates from around the firm here in New York and probably 25 or 30 partners working on staffing this exercise. It tends to be very well-received by the associates and an extremely good training vehicle.

Michael Carlinsky: We also have a program called AAIT. It stands for 'Additional Associate In Trial.' In the instances where an associate by the end of his or her second year hasn't been to trial, this program takes associates and puts them on the trial team, with no charge to the client.

Any trial lawyer will tell you, until you've been to the big game, the big dance, you really don't appreciate what goes into a trial—the amount of work, the amount of effort, the way everybody has to come together. For us, it's all about making sure young lawyers get exposed to the trial process. This program, which has been in place for at least 10 years, is there for that purpose.

JG: What are your thoughts on the departure earlier this year of Philippe Selendy, Faith Gay and eight other partners to form their own firm?

Rick Werder: Obviously that was a surprising event. It was something the firm really hadn't experienced before. But I think as we've reflected on it, we've come to the realization that when you have super-talented lawyers who have been heavily promoted and developed substantial reputations, occasionally some of them might decide to pursue some other vision. After the initial shock, we are wishing them well and moving on with life pretty much uninterrupted without them.

Michael Carlinsky: I do think it's a sign of the maturity of our firm. Rarely a day goes by where you don't read an article where a firm announces a group is leaving, or a couple of lawyers are leaving. It happens every day around the country at law firms. We understand the two main partners wanted to do something different, go in a different direction.

We've been blessed over the last 13 years in that, given the firm's success, there was almost no litigation partner at any firm that we couldn't recruit. Every lateral partner who has joined us, to a person, has been a tremendous success and seen their practice and their profile increase significantly, particularly in New York. It really has been a one-way street, with partners joining the firm, and few if any leaving the firm. I think that explains why we were a little surprised that a small group decided to leave and start their own firm. But it's a sign that our firm has now developed to the point where people who have become financially very successful decide to go in a different direction.

JG: Last week, the office lost three products liability partners including Sheila Birnbaum and Mark Cheffo to Dechert. Did that departure feel different?

Michael Carlinsky: It did feel different. Sheila is one of the most respected lawyers in the world, and is loved by everyone in the firm. And with Mark, they developed a great products group. Over the last five years that they have been with the firm, they have run into conflicts with some of their clients, and there were some rate sensitivities.This led them to leave. But they leave us on the best of terms and we remain very close friends and colleagues. In fact, even since they have announced they are leaving we have teamed with them on new engagements which we will continue to work on together after they are at their new firm. “