Quinn Emanuel expects to pay equity partners $9 million on average for 2025, becoming just the third large law firm to reach that profits mark.
The payout reflects a strong financial performance driven by demand for partner services, firm co-managing partner Michael Carlinsky said in an interview. The average volume of partner billings, some topping $2,000 per hour, outpaced that of associates, who charge lower rates.
“Clients want Quinn Emanuel partners actively engaged in their matters,” Carlinsky said. “They view partners as top of their game.”
The profits figure, a 4% increase from the more than $8.6 million Quinn Emanuel gave partners in 2024, strengthens the firm’s position as it competes with rivals for top industry talent. Only two law firms among the 100 largest by revenue, Kirkland & Ellis and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, tallied more than $9 million in profits per equity partner in 2024, based on figures published by the American Lawyer.
Other firms have not yet reported their 2025 figures, but a $9 million profits average would likely keep Quinn Emanuel among the top three in the industry. No other firms among the top 100 topped $8 million in average partner payouts in 2024.
Quinn Emanuel ranks high in pay even though, as the world’s largest litigation-only firm, it eschews the corporate and transactional work Big Law rivals use to pad their bottom lines. The firm last year won a UK high court ruling for IBM and defended video streaming platform Vimeo against copyright claims brought by record labels.
The firm also is known for litigating in high-profile cases on behalf of celebrity clients such as Alec Baldwin and Elon Musk. It’s defending El Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who became a symbol of President Donald Trump’s crackdown.
Revenue Boom
Quinn Emanuel expects to report at least $2.7 billion in revenue for 2025, Carlinsky said. That would mark a 10% increase from the nearly $2.5 billion the firm reported for 2024. The firm plans to deploy its earnings to compensate associates and junior partners and invest in the firm’s marketing and business development efforts, he said.
The figures show Quinn is on track to meet the financial targets Carlinsky established when he took the leadership reins along with partner William Burck in 2022—$3 billion in revenue and $10 million in profits per equity partner by the end of 2026.
The firm’s expansion of associate and counsel ranks has helped drive revenue gains, Carlinsky said. Quinn Emanuel added approximately 200 of those lawyers since he took over, he said.
The targets were “extremely aggressive but achievable,” Carlinsky said. “We were looking at ways of increasing efficiency, increasing our headcount, and our leverage.”
A law firm’s leverage is the ratio of attorneys outside the firm’s equity pool to the number of equity partners. Quinn Emanuel’s leverage has grown to 5.9 in 2024 from 4.4 in 2022, American Lawyer data show, outpacing the average for the country’s 100 largest firms.
“If leverage is not either steady or increasing, then that could be a sign of not growing your business pie,” Carlinsky said. “We’re always focused on growing our business pie.”
Leadership Test
Carlinsky, after joining Quinn Emanuel from Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe in 2002, has focused his practice on representing large insurance companies such as American International Group Inc. and Lexington Insurance Co.
He and Burck took the leadership reins when founder and longtime managing partner John Quinn moved to an executive chairman role. The firm had never previously set financial targets at any point in his 23-year tenure, Carlinsky said.
“Our goals had always been to have great financials and hire the best people,” he said. “Bill and I, it’s fair to say, brought a renewed focus on the business of the law firm.”
Burck, who sits on the board at Fox Corp., joined the firm in 2009 following a stint as a White House lawyer for President George W. Bush.
Harvard University hired Burck to navigate Trump’s threats of funding cuts, and the Trump Organization fired him as its ethics adviser as a result. Brad Karp, chairman of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, called on Burck for counsel when Trump targeted the firm with an executive order, a person familiar with the matter said.
Partners Collect
Partners on average billed 140 more hours than associates in 2025, due to growth in the associate and counsel ranks and client demand for partner-level expertise, Carlinsky said. Law firms often set higher annual billable hour targets for associates than partners. Carlinsky said he billed about 2,100 hours in 2025, outpacing six of his associates who billed an average of 1,900.
Use of artificial intelligence by lawyers may be contributing an “immaterial” amount to the smaller volume of annual associate billings, Carlinsky said.
The firm’s financial performance has allowed it to leapfrog over competitors in annual revenue rankings, jumping from the 28th position in 2020 to the 18th highest-grossing firm in 2024, according to the American Lawyer.
Still, Quinn Emanuel is facing stepped-up competition.
The firm’s billion-dollars peers, amid the last four years of volatility in corporate deal flows, have devoted significant business resources to growing their litigation practices. Kirkland & Ellis, Paul Weiss, Davis Polk, and Paul Hastings grew their litigation headcount by at least 22% since the beginning of 2024.
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