It’s time for another installment of our Litigation Leaders series. This month’s Q&A is with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan’s Diane Doolittle, who co-heads the firm’s national trial practice group. Based in Silicon Valley, the former prosecutor has tried more than 70 cases—and won 92% of them.

Lit Daily: Tell us a little about yourself—beyond what’s in your law firm bio.  

Diane Doolittle: Growing up, my family crisscrossed America, moving to a new state every year or two. I attended eight different schools in the span of 12 years; it gave me a resilience that I access constantly as a trial lawyer.

I competed in speech and debate in high school and switched to musical theater in college. I knew I was never going to have a career on Broadway, but it was great training. I know my theater and debate experiences were invaluable in preparing me to be a trial lawyer. 

I am intensely competitive—in what I hope is a constructive way. It motivates me to work incredibly hard, to be better prepared than my opponents and hopefully catch lucky breaks, and to get great results for clients. To channel this part of my personality, I compete outside of the courtroom, too, in show-jumping competitions. It keeps me humble and focused.    

Show jumping isn’t for the faint of heart. You have to navigate a 1,600-pound horse around a course of up to 15 obstacles, each nearly four feet in height. These obstacles simulate natural barriers, such as large fences and brick walls. Many are scary to horses, with funny colors, shapes and shadows. The object of the competition is to go as fast as possible without knocking the obstacles down. Imagine trying to convince a farm animal to make that effort. 

How big is your litigation department—are literally all of the lawyers at QE litigators? Where are most of your lawyers concentrated geographically?

Our firm is comprised of more than 800 lawyers around the world. Yes, all of our lawyers do litigation or some closely-related form of disputes work—trials, arbitrations, investigations, and the like.

Most of our lawyers are based in the U.S., though we have 23 offices around the world. Our largest offices are New York (235+), Los Angeles (130+), Northern California (100+), and Washington DC (90+)— and we have growing presences in Houston, Chicago, and Boston.

In what three areas of litigation do you have the deepest bench? 

We do all manner of disputes work, from antitrust to securities, government investigations to complex commercial disputes, but our largest practice areas are:

—Intellectual property disputes, particularly patents, including patents in the electronic arts and life sciences.

—Financial industry-related litigation, including structured financial products, claims against banks and restructurings.

—High-stakes trial work. We have an armada of first-chair trial lawyers with, collectively, hundreds of trials under their belts. We often get tapped for must-win, bet-the-company-type cases.

What are some of the firm’s goals or priorities for its litigation practice?

We aspire to be—and I believe we are—the premier international litigation platform. As part of achieving that goal, we strive to serve as trial counsel for all of the largest, most complex, bet-the-company disputes around the world. If there is a high-profile dispute going on anywhere in the world, the odds are that we’re involved in some way. 

 What do you see as hallmarks of your firm’s litigators? What makes you different?  

At Quinn Emanuel, we have the unique ability to combine deep intellect and subject matter expertise with street smarts. We are a firm of trial lawyers; opposing parties and counsel know we are not afraid to take a case to trial. Indeed, we relish the chance to do so, because we know how to win.  

Our deep bench of trial experience brings serious credibility to every dispute. We focus on being the first to figure out what will win the case. Paradoxically, this often makes it easier to resolve cases. And if they do not get resolved, it makes us more likely to win at trial.

How many lateral litigation partners have you hired in the last 12 months? What do you look for in lateral hires?  

In the last year, we have hired 13 lateral partners. We take great care to recruit the best and brightest lawyers around the world. When we recruit, we are looking for fantastically talented lawyers but also those who have practices that are accretive to, or meld with, our current practice.

The lateral hires are: York Faulkner, Tokyo (Finnegan, Henderson); Xiao Liu, Shanghai (Skadden); Colleen Tracy James, New York (Mayer Brown); Tomislav Joksimovic, DC (EFG International) (Previously with the firm as Of Counsel); Sandra Moser, DC (United States Department of Justice); Patricia Tomasco, Houston (Jackson Walker LLP); Deborah Newman, New York (Akin Gump); Manisha Sheth, New York (Office of the New York Attorney General) (Rehire); Leonid Feller, Chicago (Kirkland & Ellis); Tony Andriotis, Tokyo (Hughes Hubbard & Reed); Elaine Whiteford, London (Covington & Burling); D. James Pak, Los Angeles (Baker & McKenzie LLP); Patrick King, Houston (Kirkland & Ellis).

What were some of your firm’s biggest in-court wins in the past year? 

We have won several cases recently that you have been nice enough to write about in ‘Litigator of the Week’: For example, the Vantage case against Petrobras, in which we secured a $734 million award for the client; our 9th Circuit win for Hyundai in a highly significant class-action case; our victory in an important copyright case on behalf of the Andy Warhol Foundation.

We returned $1.74 billion to creditors of Lehman Brothers Holdings in litigation against Citibank regarding the valuation of derivative securities.

We won an ITC exclusion order as well as a jury verdict for Qualcomm, finding that Apple infringed four patents, leading to successful settlement of the two companies’ worldwide, high-profile licensing battle.

Overseas, we won a ground-breaking appeal for Walter Merricks CBE, on behalf of 46 million consumers, overturning the refusal to certify his class action against Mastercard, for unlawful anticompetitive interchange fees. This case happened in England.

We won dismissal of unlawfully obtained evidence in the case against New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. The prosecution is appealing the judge’s ruling, but the state has acknowledged that without these unlawfully obtained tapes, they have no case.

Can you give an example or two of tactics you’ve employed that exemplify your firm’s approach to litigating cases? 

We are often engaged in the weeks or months before trial to take over difficult cases from other lawyers. With our distinct trial-oriented approach, we often find ourselves shuffling the deck to improve the case.  

As one example, we took over defending a trade secrets case [for Pfizer] that had been lost at trial. By changing the focus, crafting, filing and winning a severance motion to distance ourselves from a toxic co-defendant, and recasting the alleged trade secrets and defense themes, we were able to win the re-trial, reducing the liability from a $1 billion plaintiff’s demand to a $165,000 judgment on a small fraction of the alleged purloined trade secrets.

We are intensely focused on preparing cases for trial; most other firms are not. As an example, we recently joined a case preparing for trial and learned that the opposing parties had played games in discovery. Instead of complaining, we used that against our opponents.  

We brought and won multiple witness exclusion orders; we successfully barred our opponent from using key documentary evidence; we earned the trust of the court, as our opponents lost the trust. We prepared a compelling narrative and ensured we had credible witnesses and readied them for trial. The opposing parties spent their time trying to avoid discovery. By the time trial rolled around, it was too late for them to pull together absent witnesses and documents, and their case suffered for it.  

Where are you looking to build or expand in the next year?

We want to continue to grow our international footprint—we are a global firm—and are always looking for leading practitioners in important markets. Key areas for growth will continue to be antitrust and competition, patents, and white collar/investigations.

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