Lessons from One of the World’s Toughest Litigators
By Ajay Shamdasani, host, Regulatory Ramblings Podcasts *
My discussion with John B. Quinn clarified one thing for me: I would have never have cut it as a trial lawyer – so glad I never studied trial advocacy in law school. Levity aside, our chat in episode #45 (A Conversation with One of World's Most Formidable Trial Lawyers)** of HKU Law’s Regulatory Ramblings podcast was eye opening.
John is the founder and chairman of the nearly four-decade old Los Angeles-based firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. It has been voted the world’s “most-feared law firm” ten times by independent research provider BTI Consulting. In BTI’s annual survey, when respondents were asked which law firm they least wanted to face as opposing counsel, Quinn Emanuel was consistently ranked as the world’s most feared litigation law firms.
It takes a certain type of temperament to want to go to court and argue. You really have to think something of yourself and have a lot of confidence.
Being conflict averse and as one whose approach to dispute resolution is to want to bring people together to negotiate mutually satisfactory outcomes, sometimes I wish the common law system was not as combative and contentious. Though, I must concede, the way barristers in Hong Kong conduct themselves is probably a good deal more genteel than what goes on in US courtrooms.
A defining feature of English law and other common law jurisdictions is the distinction between barristers who advocate on behalf of parties in court and solicitors, with whom clients have the most contact (barristers bill the ultimate client through solicitors; some London barristers have bragged of how little contact they have clients; sometimes meeting with them for the first time just before proceedings begin). In the American context, however, the distinction between barristers and solicitors quickly broke down because in pre-revolutionary, colonial America there was a shortage of legal services in general.
Yet, even in the US, to this day, there remains a functional difference as only about 20% of US lawyers are litigators. A joke I heard long ago was that the only time most lawyers go to court is when they are sued for malpractice.
Litigation is undoubtedly competitive and argumentative – and it is not something that John shies away from but revels in. He is after all an avid mountain climber and Ironman triathlete,
Yet, as even he would concede, litigation is a well-coordinated marathon, not a sprint. It is not about rushing into a case like a typical bull headed, hyper aggressive type A-personality but rather, about balancing aggression and strategy; competitiveness and tenacity without a well thought out plan get you nowhere.
Still, such a path is not right for everyone: the American Bar Association’s figures have for some years shown that within five years after graduating from law school, about half the members of any particular class cohort are no longer actively engaged in the practice of law. A key factor cited is burnout.
John acknowledges that for some, the law is not a viable long-term career route because the profession demands a lot from its most high achieving members.
More surprising for me was hearing a veteran trial lawyer like him touting the virtues of alternative dispute resolution. He is very bullish on Singapore’s growth in ADR – especially in international arbitration and regional markets.
A longstanding policy of Quinn Emanuel is to focus purely on litigation and to not represent the world’s largest money centre banks, notwithstanding the deep pockets for premium legal services that the biggest global financial institutions possess. It is an approach that has won the firm many plaudits amongst the plaintiffs’ bar writ large. Ultimately, even the average person on the street deserves access to justice.
Such an outlook has served him well. Since 1986, John and his partners have built one of the largest business litigation and arbitration law firms in the world, which The Wall Street Journal called a “global litigation powerhouse.” In that time, Quinn Emanuel has grown to 35 offices in 12 countries on four continents, with over 1100 lawyers, generating more than $2 billion in revenue annually. In recent years, the firm has recovered over $80 billion for plaintiffs.
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