LONDON – Unlike most American firms landing blinking in London, one problem that Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges will not have is standing out. After all, these self-consciously combative trial lawyers extraordinaire manage to stand out in their home town, having grown at staggering speed from their 1986 launch to become a top 100 U.S. practice in just two decades.
But it’s far more than startling growth that the Los Angeles-based upstart is known for. It remains one of the very few law firms of any significance to focus exclusively on litigation, a stance that the firm has turned to its advantage by freeing itself from conflicts, both legal and the hassle of having to compete with transactional departments for resources.
The 375-lawyer firm’s singular culture, defined to a considerable extent by charismatic founder John Quinn, also marks the firm out. Playing off its L.A. roots, Quinn has made a virtue of rejecting the buttoned-down law firm image, even by California’s laid-back standards.
Part of that culture was an aggressive push to win business that saw the firm regularly cold-calling potential clients, a tactic that Quinn maintains to this day (despite what U.K. lawyers may believe about pushy American firms, this is not the done thing state-side). That attitude is typified by the firm’s marketing and Web site, which lets readers know that this is the firm you call in “when an eight-figure verdict simply won’t do.”
This is part of the whole trial lawyer mentality. While America is obviously not short of litigators, there’s still a very small band of firms that specialize in handling cases before judge and jury. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Kirkland & Ellis; Jones Day; and Boies, Schiller & Flexner make up a good chunk of that very exclusive club alongside Quinn, but there’s not many others. Members of this club would regard most law firms as settlers and risk-managers, not real trial lawyers.
Quinn has also distinguished itself through its unusual recruitment strategy that saw the firm obsessively target the brightest students long before it really had the reputation to justify their employment. Now it’s fully stocked with former law review editors from top schools and brings in the caliber of students you would expect to see at Cravath.
Mixing this weird alchemy of quirk, ambition and audacity, Quinn has rapidly established itself as one of America’s most prolific litigation teams and go-to counsel for clients including IBM, Shell, Northrop Grumman and General Motors. And aside from the lucrative defense work, the firm is well known for taking aggressive contingency fee positions to fund high-stakes claimant litigation – with Quinn once telling journalists that “we like having skin in the game.”
Skin has so far proved highly profitable, according to Recorder affiliate The American Lawyer, whose 2007 financial rankings show Quinn’s revenue to have rocketed to $384.5 million, which average equity partner profits had hit $3.01 million, making it one of the U.S.’s most profitable law firms.
The question now is if London will know what has hit it as the firm last week recruited Kirkland & Ellis restructuring and litigation partner Richard East to launch its U.K. practice. The move came after one of East’s clients recommended that he meet Quinn’s hiring partner, William Urquhart. Certainly, Weil, Gotshal & Manges didn’t see it coming as the New York law firm had already voted on East’s arrival before Quinn’s famously speedy recruitment process caused a last-minute change of plan (Quinn claims to have only decided to launch in London three weeks ago despite considering the move for more than three years). Though East’s CV doesn’t at first glance appear to be a perfect match for Quinn, the firm says his experience closely mirrors that of New York partner Susheel Kirpalani, a former Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy partner who helped Quinn gain traction with hedge fund clients.
The plan now is to have a credible team to start pursuing high-end litigation in London, with post-crunch claims targeting banks and accountants clearly high on the agenda.
How this plays out will be fascinating. No American law firm of this breed has tried launching in the city. The litigation-driven Shook, Hardy & Bacon was a very different beast at the time of its troubled 2002 takeover of Arnander Irvine & Zeitman, as are class action specialists like Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll that are currently targeting Europe group actions. Obviously, the U.S. version of the global law firm is also very different, having become grudging converts to the corporate-driven model of their U.K. counterparts.
In this context, the Sullivans and Weils of this world are hybrids and not much like most pure-blood U.S. law firms at all. Either way, Quinn is going to stand out from this crowd.
But even though the firm has made a great success of taking its model into the highly competitive New York market – building a 130-lawyer practice in six years – some of the initial comments regarding the firm’s city strategy suggest that it doesn’t quite have its head around how litigation works in the U.K. This utterly fresh approach could prove to be either a stunning success or a dismal failure and much will depend on the firm’s ability to replicate its famed knack of hiring the best that propelled its growth in the U.S.
Urquhart, in town “on a quest for the best and brightest the U.K. has to offer,” certainly promises that the firm will live up to its legend in the Square Mile: “We can provide lawyers with a unique opportunity. We still make up partners. We make up lots of them. We make more money than most of our competitors. We have more fun. We have a track record of success where ever we go. We think we will find some U.K. lawyers with a sense of adventure.”
Alex Novarese is editor of Legal Week, a Recorder affiliate based in the U.K. This piece originally appeared in that publication.
