The firm was established in 1986 by
John B. Quinn, Eric Emanuel, David Quinto, and Phyllis Kupferstein, with the purpose of being a litigation-only firm. In 1988, A. William "Bill" Urquhart decided to join the two-year-old firm, which became Quinn Emanuel & Urquhart, and soon later Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Oliver with the addition of Dale Hugh Oliver. Another name partner
George Hedges was hired in 1998 to increase the firm's Hollywood presence, and the firm was known as Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges for over a decade. Quinn Emanuel is the first
AmLaw 100 firm to have a female name partner. The firm changed its name in March 2010 to include
Kathleen Sullivan, former Dean of Stanford Law School, who heads the firm's appellate practice. In 2014, the firm was the subject of a
Freedom of Information Act request by
Microsoft, in connection with a contract it had supposedly signed with the
IRS.
Intellectual property litigation is the firm's largest practice area and the firm currently has over 200 lawyers who litigate IP cases. Quinn Emanuel represented the Winklevoss twins' social network,
ConnectU, in its lawsuit that accused
Facebook founder
Mark Zuckerberg of stealing ideas for his own social network. The parties reached a confidential settlement, yet Quinn Emanuel later revealed the confidential settlement amount of $65 million in a firm advertisement. In 2024, as part of the
Sean Combs sexual misconduct allegations,
Tony Buzbee filed a lawsuit against
Jay-Z's company
Roc Nation, Quinn Emanuel—which employs Carter's attorneys—and others, claiming that these parties were attempting to sway his clients into suing him and his firm, the Buzbee Law Firm. According to Buzbee, Roc Nation paid off some of his former clients to file bogus lawsuits, while Quinn Emanuel orchestrated the scheme. On September 1, 2011,
Washington, D.C.'s
Legal Times Blog announced that the firm was opening its first office in the nation's capital. In 2013, the firm opened offices in
Paris,
Munich,
Hong Kong, and
Sydney, and, in 2014, it opened offices in
Brussels and
Houston office.
LegalWeek reported that Quinn Emanuel opened an office in
Seattle in 2015. Other offices of the firm are located in
Abu Dhabi,
Atlanta,
Beijing,
Berlin,
Dubai,
Perth,
Riyadh,
San Francisco,
Silicon Valley,
Shanghai,
Singapore,
Stuttgart and
Zürich. == Notable attorneys ==