New partnership class is seventy percent women, spans practice areas and offices across the globe, from Boston to Beijing.
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LOS ANGELES – Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, the global litigation powerhouse, has elected 14 lawyers to the firm’s partnership, the firm’s leadership announced today. Ten of the new partners are women, firm leaders noted. They include lawyers in offices around the world, from Boston to Beijing.
“We have an extraordinary talent pool of attorneys spanning the globe, and they are essential to our ability to provide clients with the elite level of service and representation they expect from this firm,” said firm Founder and Chairman John B. Quinn. “Our new partner class reflects the quality of our hiring and the emphasis we place on training and nurturing the world’s top young legal talent.”
The elections took place at Quinn Emanuel’s annual partnership meeting on December 9 and take effect on January 1, 2024. The newly elected partners are:
McKenzie Anderson (pictured)– McKenzie, who is based in Oklahoma, is Of Counsel in the firm’s New York office. She is a first chair trial lawyer with a practice focused on high stakes, complex commercial litigation, government and internal investigations, and white-collar defense. McKenzie first joined the firm in 2008 after a clerkship with the Honorable Barbara M. G. Lynn in the Northern District of Texas, and, after seven years as a federal prosecutor, rejoined in 2022. As an Assistant United States Attorney, McKenzie investigated and prosecuted economic crimes, including government contracting fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud, insider trading, trade secret theft, and cyber intrusions, as well as human trafficking offenses.
Kathryn Bonacorsi – Kate is based in Quinn Emanuel’s New York office. As a litigator, she represents plaintiffs and defendants across a wide range of complex commercial disputes before courts and arbitration panels, and she has significant experience litigating high-profile, high-dollar cases. Her experience includes shareholder disputes and derivative cases, entertainment and sports disputes, cross-border disputes, M&A disputes, employment disputes, and intellectual property disputes. In 2023 and 2024, she was awarded “The Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch, Commercial Litigation.”
Jodie Cheng – Jodie is based in the firm’s San Francisco office. She is an intellectual property litigator focusing on complex patent, technical trade secret, and copyright disputes. Jodie has served as trial counsel in over a dozen trials; conducted direct and cross examinations of witnesses, including technical and damages experts; and argued dispositive, evidentiary, and discovery motions. Her work has encompassed a variety of technologies, including encryption, cybersecurity, semiconductor fabrication, multilayer network and Ethernet systems, cellular baseband, GPUs, implantable medical devices, biologics, surgical systems, and mechanical ventilation systems. Her work has been repeatedly recognized by the American Lawyer‘s “Litigator of the Week.”
Peter Fountain– Peter is based in the firm’s New York office and focuses on complex commercial disputes. He represents plaintiffs and defendants in high stakes matters in federal and state courts and before arbitration panels across the country. Peter joined the firm in 2020 following a clerkship with the Hon. Dora L. Irizarry, then-Chief United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of New York. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 2015.
Samantha Gillespie – Samantha is based in the firm’s New York and Washington D.C. offices. Her practice focuses on complex commercial litigation, white-collar criminal defense, and government investigations. She has particular expertise handling cross-border disputes involving Europe and Latin America due to her training in English and Spanish Law and fluency in Spanish, which also enables her to manage disputes wholly in Spanish. Samantha was named a “Latin America Rising Legal Star” by Latinvex in 2022 and as “The Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch, Commercial Litigation, Criminal Defense: White-Collar” for 2024. She received her JD from NYU Law, graduating magna cum laude and Order of the Coif.
Julianne “Jules” Jaquith – Jules is based in Quinn Emanuel’s Houston and Washington, D.C. offices. She represents clients in courts and international arbitration proceedings, including sovereign governments and foreign corporations in investor state disputes, international commercial arbitration matters, and cross border litigation. Her experience spans many sectors, including energy, oil and gas, mining, telecommunications, and post-merger and acquisition disputes. She has experience with matters administered by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and under other international arbitration rules, including UNCITRAL, ICDR, ICC, and JAMS. Her practice is primarily focused on disputes involving Latin America, and she is highly proficient in Spanish.
Lauren Martin – Lauren is based in Quinn Emanuel’s Boston office. She focuses her practice on patent litigation and has significant experience in the areas of biotechnology, medical devices, diagnostic testing, and the chemical arts. Lauren has experience in all aspects of litigation, including strategy development, pleadings, motion practice, fact and expert discovery, witness preparation, trial, post-trial briefing and appeal. She has served as trial counsel in cases around the country and advises clients on global litigation strategy.
Michael Packard – Michael joined Quinn Emanuel’s Boston office in 2018, following four years as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Maryland and, before that, several years at another international law firm. His current practice builds on his experience as a federal prosecutor and a civil litigator, encompassing white-collar defense, government investigations, and related commercial litigation. Michael helps corporate clients from a variety of industries navigate investigations and prosecutions initiated by the DOJ, SEC, CFTC and other government entities.
Sara Pollock – Sara is based in Quinn Emanuel’s Silicon Valley office. She is a trial lawyer with a practice focused on high stakes complex commercial litigation, including intellectual property cases and other business litigation. Before joining the firm, Sara represented clients in a wide array of civil and criminal matters and clerked for the California Supreme Court. She has been recognized multiple times as a “Northern California Rising Star” by Super Lawyers Magazine, Next Generation Leader in Tech Law by The Recorder, and The Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch in Intellectual Property Litigation and Labor, and Employment Litigation.
Ryan Rakower – Ryan is based in the firm’s New York office. His practice focuses on complex commercial litigation. Ryan has experience in litigation in a wide variety of subject matters and has represented private equity firms, venture capital firms, hedge funds, pension funds, international banks, insurance companies, biotechnology companies, electric utilities, live entertainment providers, luxury apparel retailers, and art fabricators and dealers in a whole host of commercial disputes. He has particular experience dealing with commercial contract and fraud disputes, securities litigation, mergers and acquisitions litigation, real estate litigation, business divorces, ownership and founder disputes, and disputes involving allegations of employment discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination, and retaliation.
Hope Skibitsky – Hope is based in the New York office, where her practice focuses on complex commercial litigation across a wide range of sectors. Hope’s clients include individuals, shareholders, executives, and private and publicly traded corporations, including some of the most profitable and cutting-edge technology companies in the world. Among other areas of expertise, Hope specializes in data scraping litigation, including litigating disputes under the Consumer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”), breach of website terms of service, and related common law claims. She is a frequent speaker on the intersection of technology and the law. Hope joined the firm in 2017 following a clerkship with the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, the Honorable Jose L. Linares.
Courtney Whang – Courtney is based in the firm’s New York office. She joined the firm in 2015 and returned in 2017 after a clerkship with the Honorable George B. Daniels in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Her practice focuses on complex commercial litigation, specializing in high-stakes trials. She frequently advises private equity and hedge fund clients in contentious contact disputes and fiduciary duty actions. She has extensive litigation experience in the financial services and energy sectors. She has secured numerous victories for her clients on both the plaintiff and defense side, including throughout the nation’s federal courts and in Delaware Chancery Court. In 2024, she was awarded “The Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch, Commercial Litigation.”
Yixuan Zhu – Yixuan is based in Quinn Emanuel’s Beijing office. She is a founding member of the firm’s China practice and worked in the firm’s New York office for several years before returning to China. Yixuan has first-hand experience in a wide array of matters, including complex commercial litigation in U.S. federal and state courts, international commercial and investor-state arbitrations, DOJ/SEC enforcement actions and internal investigations as well as crisis management matters such as multi-pronged and multi-jurisdictional asset recovery and corporate control battles. Leveraging her broad expertise in disputes and deep insight into cultural nuances and challenges, she now focuses on advising Chinese clients in their most complex and high-stake cross-border disputes.
Ognjen (“Ogi”) Zivojnovic – Ogi is based in the firm’s San Francisco office. He joined the firm in 2015. His practice is dedicated to helping companies navigate the challenges they face at the intersection of law and technology. His primary focus is patent litigation — where he has successfully represented both plaintiffs and defendants — and he has helped clients navigate trade secret, copyright, trademark, contract, fraud, and antitrust issues involving technical subject matter. An engineer by training, with a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Ogi previously worked as an engineer at Qualcomm. His technical skills run the gamut from consumer software and products to cloud services and AI to wireless chips and semiconductor manufacture.
