Firm Profiles

If any firm could be the poster child for alternative fee arrangements, it is Quinn Emanuel, a litigation–only firm that has climbed The Am Law 100 with huge strides in recent years (its fifty–first place finish on the 2011 list marked a 27–place leap since 2007). Gross revenues jumped by more than 30 percent in both 2010 and 2011. Profits per partner regularly rank among the top three, and broke the $4 million mark in 2011. Quinn’s secret: litigating—and pricing—outside the box.

“Obviously, we could not have achieved financial results like these simply billing by the hour,” says managing partner John Quinn. “A significant amount of our revenue came from contingent fee and other alternative fee arrangements, both on the plaintiffs and defense side.”

It doesn’t hurt that the firm, which is based in Los Angeles and numbers more than 450 lawyers, has one of the nation’s most highly regarded litigation departments (Quinn says its lawyers have won 91 percent of the 1,460 cases they’ve tried). The firm was a finalist in The American Lawyer’s 2010 Litigation Department of the Year contest, and earned honorable mentions in 2006, 2008, and 2012. Quinn’s IP litigators—who comprise nearly 40 percent of the firm’s attorneys—fared even better, earning the nod as IP Litigation Department of the Year in 2010 (and ranking as a finalist in 2012). The firm has won key cases for Google Inc., including a pair of trials defending the Internet giant’s advertising programs, and others for its A–List clients.

Famous for its lack of executive, recruitment, and compensation committees (the only formal management group is one that evaluates prospective contingency fee cases), Quinn is also noted for being the first Am Law 100 to have a female name partner (former Stanford Law School dean Kathleen Sullivan received that honor in March 2010). The firm is well known, too, for the absence of a dress code—though with the profits partners are pulling in, they certainly can afford suits.

—Updated as of 1/1/12