NEW YORK, NY and CHICAGO, IL – October 4, 2011: Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP announced today that Andrew Schapiro has joined the firm as partner. A member of the New York and Illinois bars, Schapiro will divide his time between the firm’s offices in New York and Chicago. Before joining Quinn Emanuel, Schapiro had been a partner in the litigation department of Mayer Brown LLP.
Schapiro has eighteen years of trial and appellate experience representing major corporations and individuals in sensitive, high-profile, and high-stakes matters. Legal 500 United States ranks Schapiro as one of the country’s leading appellate lawyers and describes him as a “superstar.” He is listed in the Best Lawyers in America and has been selected as a New York “Super Lawyer” each year since the list’s inception.
Schapiro has first-chaired fourteen federal jury trials, managed large litigation teams, and argued and won important appeals in state and federal courts. He works primarily in the areas of intellectual property, white-collar and securities litigation, complex commercial litigation, and appeals. He led the team that recently won summary judgment for YouTube and its parent Google in the billion-dollar copyright infringement suit brought by Viacom in federal district court in New York, and garnered wide attention when he won acquittal on all counts for an NYSE Specialist Broker accused of securities fraud as lead counsel in a contentious jury trial in the Southern District of New York.
“Andy Schapiro is a unique talent,” said Managing Partner John Quinn. “He can master and explain the most complex cases to any audience, be it a jury of ordinary citizens or a panel of sophisticated judges.”
Peter Calamari, Managing Partner of the New York office, agreed. “Experienced fist chair trial lawyers in complex commercial and criminal cases are an increasingly scarce commodity. Andy is one of the best; he will be an immediate asset to our practice and our clients.” Calamari added that he expected Schapiro will also work closely with Kathleen M. Sullivan, chair of the firm’s appellate practice. David Nelson, Managing Partner of the firm’s Chicago office, said, “It’s great to continue to expand in Chicago with a trial lawyer of Andy’s experience and talent.”
Schapiro said: “Quinn Emanuel is the only firm I would have considered. I’ve had the privilege and good fortune to try some big cases over the years, and it’s what I love to do. No firm tries more complex business cases than Quinn Emanuel, so it’s a perfect fit.”
Schapiro is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School where he was an editor of The Harvard Law Review and winner of the prestigious Joshua Montgomery Sears, Jr. Prize. After graduation he clerked for Judge Richard A. Posner on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and then for Justice Harry Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court. He then practiced for five years as a trial lawyer with the Federal Defenders’ Office for the Southern District of New York, defending individuals accused of a wide range of federal offenses, serving as lead counsel in numerous jury trials, and achieving favorable verdicts in a majority of those cases.
Quinn Emanuel is a 475+ lawyer business litigation firm — the largest in the world devoted solely to business litigation — with offices in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Chicago, Tokyo, London, and Mannheim. Firm lawyers have tried over 1320 cases, winning over 90% percent of them. When representing defendants, our trial experience gets us better settlements or defense verdicts. When representing plaintiffs, our lawyers have won over $15 billion in judgments and settlements. We are the only firm in the United States that has won four nine-figure jury verdicts in the last seven years. We have also obtained eight nine-figure and three ten-figure settlements. In 2010, The American Lawyer named the firm the top IP litigation firm in the US and one of the top six commercial litigation firms in the country. In 2011, The Lawyer named the firm “International Firm of the Year.”
