Why law firm Quinn Emanuel does offsite team building on intense international hikes in the world

Last month, more than 250 employees flew to Cusco, Peru, to hike part of the Andes mountain range. The lawyers had two options: a grueling 18-mile overnight hike through the Salcantay Pass in the Andes, which reaches an altitude of more than 15,000 feet, or a slightly less intense 8.5-mile trek to 14,000 feet. 

“It’s intense,” says Tigran Guledjian, partner at Quinn Emanuel and co-chair of the firm’s national intellectual property litigation practice, who helps run the hikes and has been attending them for more than 20 years. “You carry your own backpack with your own tent, and your own sleeping bag, and your own food, and you are responsible for yourself. There’s nobody out there who is going to do anything for you, other than your colleagues.” 

The tradition started in 1993, when founder and current chairman John B. Quinn, a devoted triathlete, took 15 legal analysts on a backpacking trip through Utah’s Coyote Gulch. Aside from a few years off during the COVID pandemic, the firm has hosted the event every year since then. The trip has gotten bigger over the years, and the team started travelling internationally in 2008 to some of the most recognizable and renowned hiking locations including the Faulhornweg Trail in Interlaken, Switzerland, Fuji-san in Tokyo, Japan, and Mt. Olympus, in Thessaloniki, Greece. 

“These are not easy hikes,” says Stephen Wood, managing partner of the firm’s Salt Lake City Office, who also helps execute the event. “They challenge everyone and we have a broad spectrum of people who are there, from collegiate athletes and those who do Iron Mans for fun, to those who have never camped out in their lives.”

Partners say the point of the hike is to simulate some of the stress that legal teams go through during trial and teaches employees to lean on each other when things get tough. It also serves as a way to get people from various offices across the country in one place to do something genuinely challenging together. “There are all sorts of parallels between putting yourself in a difficult situation and overcoming it, and what happens during litigation,” notes Guledjian. 

“There’s always something you can’t control out in nature and there are lessons to be learned from that which do end up being helpful in the courtroom later on.”

Quinn Emanuel

Going on the hike is not mandatory, but anyone who works at the firm is welcome to attend. Roughly a quarter of the company’s workforce, or 250 people, go every year. While many workers pay around $1,000 to help cover trip bills like hiking equipment or staying an extra day beyond the hike, the rest of the trip is covered by the firm. Analysts who are only there for the summer are invited to go for free. 

Unexpected things have certainly happened: bear encounters, park ranger citations, scorching temperatures, torrential downpours and more. During a trip to Armenia last year, an intense thunderstorm broke out while the team was hiking above the tree line and leaders had to find a way to get hundreds of people off the mountain as fast as possible. The team called for help and had to be rescued by locals. 

The company does its best to prepare workers for the dangers of each hike. After years of people bringing extra items they don’t need, like jars of marinara sauce and boxes of plastic cutlery, the company sends out a “meticulously curated” list that seasoned employees put together based on decades of doing these excursions. One of the longest hikes the team completed was 50 miles in three days in Iceland, which included 25 miles of terrain in one day, says Guledjian. 

“There’s always this caboose of 10 people who are a little bit in over their head and even though they’re the ones that are having the toughest time, they have the most rewarding experience because they don’t get left behind, they’re not out there on the trail by themselves, they’re with other people who are struggling, sealed together in a crucible. And those friendships linger.”