With its profits and revenues surging, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has added a partner from Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., to head its local international arbitration practice, while announcing the opening of a second German office in Hamburg.
An 11-lawyer team from Allen & Overy specializing in antitrust and IP litigation will form the foundation of Quinn Emanuel's new office in Hamburg, according to U.K. publication Legal Week. Nadine Herrmann, who made partner at Allen & Overy in 2009 and headed the firm's German IP group, will become the managing partner of Quinn Emanuel's new office in Germany's second-largest city.
"I am excited about joining Quinn Emanuel," Herrmann said in a statement by the firm announcing her hire. "It is the premier IP litigation firm in the world. I am also looking forward to being reunited with my former colleague Marcus Grosch and helping him further develop the firm’s IP and antitrust practice."
Quinn Emanuel opened its first German office, in Mannheim, in 2010 with the addition of Grosch, then a local patent litigation partner at Allen & Overy. The Mannheim opening was Quinn Emanuel's second outpost in Europe, following the 2008 launch of a London office that has paid major dividends for the litigation-centric firm.
Broadening its European reach further, Quinn Emanuel headed to Moscow in October 2011 by poaching partners Ivan Marisin and Vasily Kuznetsov from Dechert -- a move that came about a month after the firm opened an office in Washington, D.C.
The D.C. office was bolstered further Tuesday when Quinn Emanuel announced the latest in a steady stream of recent pickups there: David Orta, an Arnold & Porter partner whose practice focuses on international arbitrations.
Orta will head Quinn Emanuel's international arbitration practice in D.C. In recent years, he has represented Latin American companies and the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Panama in connection with investment treaty and commercial arbitration disputes.
At Quinn Emanuel, Orta joins a roster of international arbitration specialists that includes Fred Bennett in Los Angeles, Peter Calamari in New York, and Marisin and Kuznetsov in Moscow. "Our plan is to establish a top-tier international arbitration practice and to do so quickly," managing partner John Quinn said in a written statement announcing Orta's addition to the firm.
Orta's hire comes about a week after Quinn Emanuel announced that Jeffrey Gerchick, whose practice focuses on representing clients in IP matters before the International Trade Commission, had joined the firm from Kenyon & Kenyon as a partner in D.C.
Quinn Emanuel opened its D.C. office, its sixth in the United States, eight months ago by bringing in partners Paul Brinkman, Alex Lasher and Alan Whitehurst from Alston & Bird. The firm expanded on the office's initial IP focus in January by hiring Weil, Gotshal & Manges partner William Burck, a former federal prosecutor and deputy counsel to President George W. Bush.
Both Burck and Brinkman are part of a Quinn Emanuel criminal defense team seeking to represent file-sharing website Megaupload and its millionaire founder, Kim Schmitz, according to our previous reports. The Justice Department has sought to block the firm from taking a role in the case on the basis that it presents a conflict given Quinn Emanuel's representation of other media and tech clients like Fox, Google and Time Warner.
Quinn Emanuel confirmed plans earlier this year to open new offices in Asia (Singapore and Hong Kong) and to expand in Europe (Munich and Zurich) over the next two to five years. The firm's gross revenues rose 31 percent in 2011 to $723.5 million, while profits per partner jumped 15 percent to $4.16 million, according to the most recent Am Law 100 financial data.
