Scott L. Cole and Asher B. Griffin have joined the firm as partners in Austin, Texas’s capital and a burgeoning tech hub. The firm welcomes the two lateral hires as the newest members of its recently opened Austin office, wrapping up a year that extended its reputation as the world’s top business litigation firm. Cole and Griffin join John Bash and Matthew Scheck as the partners resident in the firm’s new Austin office.
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Cole joins Quinn Emanuel as a partner from McKool Smith, a commercial and intellectual property litigation firm where he was a principal specializing in patent litigation. He has tried over 25 cases to verdict and won four nine-figure verdicts/judgments. He has been recognized since 2014 in the Best Lawyers in America and the IAM Patent 1000. He won Texas Lawyer’s “Litigator of the Week” for the $391 million judgment in Versata v. SAP and later won the American Lawyer’s “Litigator of the Week” for the affirmance of that judgment at the Federal Circuit, believed to be the largest judgment ever affirmed by the Federal Circuit at that time. About $100 million of the Versata judgment was derived entirely from Cole’s cross-examination of SAP’s damages expert, and the Federal Circuit quoted directly from that cross-examination in affirming the judgment.

Griffin joins from Scott Douglass & McConnico, a commercial litigation boutique firm, where he practiced as a partner. He handles litigation across industries and practices, including pharmaceutical litigation, oil and gas disputes, private equity/hedge fund litigation, and intellectual property disputes. Most recently, Griffin has served as the lead Manufacturers’ Liaison Counsel in the Texas Opioid MDL, playing a central role in shaping the defense of the multi-billion dollar claims. He represents defendants and plaintiffs in complex litigation matters, including breach of contract, non-competition, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, usurpation of corporate opportunity and trade secrets cases. He was named a “Texas Rising Star” by Thomson Reuters in 2010 and 2011 and served on the Steering Committee of the Texas Minority Counsel Program from 2011 through 2017.