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Every now and then, you need a week like the one I just had. I didn’t have any speaking engagements or other work trips, so I stayed at home—allowing me to do copious amounts of laundry, clean out our home office, plow through piles of old mail, go to three doctors’ appointments, take both cars to the car wash, and knock out a massive amount of administrivia. I got in lots of exercise (more than 1,000 zone minutes on my Fitbit), plus ample sleep (seven-plus hours a night). It was glorious.
But I’ll be back on the road before too long. If you’ll be in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, June 2, please join me for “A More Perfect Union: Free Speech, DEI, and America at 250.” I’ll be moderating a lively panel discussion about the First Amendment and free speech featuring Professor Mary Anne Franks of GW Law School, Emerson Sykes of the ACLU, and Eugene Volokh of the Hoover Institution. For more information, please see the event page.
Now, on to the news.
Lawyer of the Week: John Quinn.
Last Sunday, John B. Quinn, founding partner of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, made an unexpected announcement. In an email to his partners, he declared that he was stepping down as executive chairman and departing from firm leadership—effective immediately. First reported by The American Lawyer, the news also received coverage in Above the Law, Bloomberg Law, and Law360.
(Note my use of John B. Quinn’s middle initial, which I use because there are a number of other John Quinns in the legal world—e.g., John C. Quinn of Hecker Fink, Professor John R. Quinn of Touro Law, the two John Quinns of Quinn & Quinn, the late White House counsel John “Jack” Quinn—and because Quinn of Quinn Emanuel was known internally at the firm as “JBQ.”)
How surprised should we be by this news? On the one hand, John Quinn is 74 and richer than Croesus, so the idea of him stepping back from leadership—while remaining a partner of the firm, continuing to help out with promoting the firm brand and business development—makes perfect sense.
On the other hand, as noted by Joe Patrice of Above the Law, JBQ said—as recently as 2024—that he had no plans of relinquishing his leadership role. And the timing of his announcement email, on a Sunday, was odd and “abrupt[],” as noted by Am Law. (Last Sunday also happened to be Mother’s Day—leading one Redditor to remark, “I heard he hates mothers, and that’s why he chose today to announce.”)
To his credit, Quinn turns over a firm that appears to be in excellent shape. Since its founding in Los Angeles in 1986, Quinn Emanuel has become the world’s largest litigation-focused firm—with around 1,300 lawyers across 35 offices, almost $2.8 billion in revenue, and more than $9.5 million in profits per equity partner. And having assembled a remarkable group of leading litigators and top trial lawyers—including Alex Spiro, William “Bill” Burck, and Michael Carlinsky—John Quinn has, unlike some founders, built an institution poised to outlast his departure.
So even though he once quipped that “when I’m gone, I don’t give a s**t what happens,” Quinn appears to have done a solid job on succession planning. Four years ago this month, he added Bill Burck and Michael Carlinsky as co-managing partners, handing some of his leadership responsibilities off to them. Integrating Burck and Carlinsky into leadership built on the firm’s establishment of a 12-person executive committee in 2020—gradually moving away from the first few decades of Quinn Emanuel’s history, when Quinn himself famously ran everything. (I once heard that back in the days of the JBQ dictatorship, if a partner wanted to write down a bill—which partners do all the time at most Biglaw firms—they had to run it by John Quinn.)
In an interview with The American Lawyer, Quinn dismissed what Am Law referred to as “rumors regarding tension between him and co-managing partners Bill Burck and Michael Carlinsky,” saying, “We have worked together in the present structure for four years. They’re friends as well as colleagues.” But to the extent that the rumors have a factual basis, Quinn’s latest move should alleviate them.
In addition to the rumors mentioned above, I’ve heard that certain other members of the 12-person executive committee had tensions with JBQ—and had been trying for a while to get him to reduce his leadership role. But this was not, as I understand it, a recent development—i.e., they had been trying to ease him into a reduced role for quite some time, without much success—so I’m guessing that Quinn’s decision to step down as executive chairman really was his own.
Even if not all his partners will miss him in leadership, you know who will miss having John Quinn in the spotlight (besides John Quinn)? Journalists. The eminently quotable Quinn “made good copy,” as the expression goes.
Most Biglaw leaders are unfailingly diplomatic; JBQ, not so much. Exhibiting a refreshing candor, he wasn’t afraid to publicly say what many were privately thinking. Back in 2020, for example, he tweeted that one contemplated Biglaw merger amounted to “two rocks that think if they hug each other tight enough, they won’t sink.” Earlier this year, as noted by Vivia Chen, he publicly dissed Cravath—the firm where he started his own legal career—as “the classic example of a market leader that failed to adapt.” He’s far from the only person wondering about the future of Cravath—but John Quinn is willing to say the quiet part out loud.
Is John B. Quinn the last of a dying breed—iconic Biglaw leaders who had ambitious visions for their firms, successfully executed on them, and weren’t afraid to say what was on their minds? Are the Biglaw leaders of today a bunch of boring, personality-challenged, McKinsey consultant types—overly focused on the bottom line, while paying insufficient attention to the bigger issues facing the legal profession?
I don’t know that I would want—or could keep up with, as a journalist—an Am Law 100 filled with dozens of John B. Quinns. But as JBQ himself hands over the reins, I do hope we’ll have at least a few JBQ types left in the ranks of Biglaw.
Other lawyers in the news:
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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche “is consciously moving with speed and decisiveness as he vies for the top job” of AG, according to Sadie Gurman and Ryan Barber of The Wall Street Journal (gift link)—and it is “now his to win or lose.”
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One way Blanche is trying to advance his AG candidacy is by pushing high-profile cases that are important to Donald Trump—such as the prosecution of Cole Tomas Allen, the California man accused of attempting to assassinate Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. But Elie Honig of New York Magazine argues that Blanche, as both a potential witness and intended victim, should recuse from the case—and that refusing to recuse could give Allen “a legitimate argument on appeal that his prosecution was tainted by conflicts of interest.”
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I added several postscripts to my story about Neal Katyal of Milbank and his controversial tweet and TED Talk (including comment from Professor Michael McConnell). To check them out, go back to my post, “Supremely Cringe: Neal Katyal And ‘TED-Gate,’” and do a “find” on the page for the word “UPDATE.”
In memoriam:
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Longtime Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, the principal drafter of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), passed away at 90—as confirmed by his son, Judge John “Jack” Blakey (N.D. Ill.). You can read obituaries for Professor Blakey in The New York Times and The Washington Post (gift links).
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Michael “Mike” McEneney—a lawyer who spent almost four decades serving as an administrator in the New York State court system, which he helped transform and modernize—passed away at 93.
May they rest in peace.
Judge of the Week: Justice David Wecht.
Both the political right and the political left have been dealing with the problem of antisemitism. And on the left side of the aisle, one prominent jurist declared that he’s had enough.
Last Monday, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht announced that he had departed from the Democratic Party, officially changing his registration so that he is “no longer registered within any political party.” In a statement—issued in his personal capacity, not his capacity as a judge—he lamented that “[a]cquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.” Justice Wecht’s move received widespread media coverage, in the Pennsylvania press and beyond (which Howard Bashman, also a resident of the Keystone State, collected at How Appealing).
Justice Wecht’s move was notable because—as he mentioned in his statement, and as he shared with me on my podcast—he actually worked in Democratic politics for many years, rising to become the vice chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. And last November, he successfully ran for reelection to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, while being publicly known as a Democrat. (Note my careful wording: because Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections are officially nonpartisan, Wecht didn’t “run as a Democrat,” but ran while being publicly known as a Democrat—and with support from the Democratic Party, which poured millions into his race.)
Justice Wecht is 63, turning 64 this coming Wednesday—early wishes for a happy birthday, Your Honor—so after he completes his current ten-year term, he’ll be close to the mandatory retirement age of 75. He could run again in 2035 and, if reelected, serve two more years. But as he told me on the podcast, “my wife might tell me long before that, ‘Hey, buddy, you’re done. Go make some money doing mediation.’”
My guess is that Justice Wecht won’t run again in 2035. If so, he no longer has to worry about getting the Democratic Party’s support for a reelection bid—which means he can be more independent, speaking out about issues of concern to him.
Of course, Justice Wecht must balance his desire to address issues of public concern with the impartiality required of him as a judge. And observers can certainly debate the propriety of any given judicial statement or collection of statements—about antisemitism or, perhaps more controversially, Israel (the subject of federal judge Roy Altman’s new book, Israel on Trial—now a New York Times bestseller).
But it’s hard to criticize Justice Wecht’s decision to “un-register” as a Democrat, standing alone. In the abstract, it would probably be better for state judiciaries if more jurists had no party affiliation. Or as Justice Wecht put it in his statement, “I am confined to a judicial role, and in that role, I maintain independence at all times and in all respects. My voting registration now reflects my independence as well.”
In other news about judges and the judiciary:
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Earlier this month, Justice Clarence Thomas became the second-longest-serving justice in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, as noted by Adam Feldman of SCOTUSblog and Damon Root of Reason. If Justice Thomas sticks around through the end of Trump’s term, as I have predicted he will, he will break the record of the late Justice William O. Douglas. In a conversation with his former clerk Kasdin Mitchell at last week’s Eleventh Circuit Judicial Conference, Justice Thomas acted as if he wasn’t keeping track—but I’m guessing the archconservative Thomas will be pleased to displace the ultraliberal Douglas at the top of the ranking.
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Speaking of SCOTUS, should a supermajority be required when the high court holds an act of Congress unconstitutional? Jesse Wegman explores this idea at his new Substack, Major Questions (discussed on Advisory Opinions).
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Turning to judges of what the Constitution calls “inferior” courts (no offense), Judge Thomas Ludington (E.D. Mich.) was sentenced to probation after pleading “no contest” to a single charge of operating a vehicle while intoxicated.
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In other news of judges (allegedly) behaving badly, former Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Edward Harold King was arrested last Tuesday, accused by federal prosecutors (E.D.N.Y.) of participating in schemes to defraud investors in commercial real-estate deals.
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In happier news from the state courts, Chief Justice Stuart Rabner of the New Jersey Supreme Court delivered an update on the state of the judiciary here in the Garden State, and here’s the headline: over the past year, more than 30 new judges were installed, reducing the number of judicial vacancies from 52 to 19.
In nominations news, the Trump administration announced six new judicial picks:
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For seats on the Eighth Circuit and Tenth Circuit, Trump selected two district judges he appointed in his first term, Judges Daniel Traynor (D.N.D.) and Daniel Domenico (D. Colo.)—as I predicted.
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For four district-court seats, Trump picked Angela Colmenero (S.D. Tex.), currently serving as deputy chief of staff to Governor Greg Abbott (R-Tex.); assistant U.S. attorney Michael Martin (E.D. Mich.), chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit; a former Thomas clerk and current Kirkland & Ellis (equity) partner, Kasdin Mitchell (N.D. Tex.); and former AUSA Antonio Pozos (E.D. Pa.), now a partner at Faegre Drinker.
In memoriam: Judge John T. Copenhaver, Jr. (S.D. W. Va.), who was appointed by President Ford in 1976, passed away at 100. May he rest in peace.
Job of the Week: an opportunity for a corporate associate in Philadelphia.
Lateral Link is assisting a global law firm with a new unposted search for a corporate associate in the firm’s Philadelphia office. This highly regarded practice advises clients on sophisticated domestic and cross-border matters across a wide range of transactional fields. The team is known for its collaborative and commercially minded approach, and associates receive meaningful responsibility and strong mentorship. The ideal candidate will possess 2–3 years of transactional experience—including experience drafting and reviewing purchasing agreements, financing documentation, shareholder agreements, and corporate-governance materials—and supporting deal teams through all phases of a transaction. If you’re interested and qualified, please submit your résumé to Vered Krasna at vkrasna@laterallink.com