_{With profit per equity partner hovering around $7million, it's no wonder they need your help.}

Despite working at one of the richest law firms in the world, solicitors at US firm Quinn Emanuel are seeking donations from the public to help them fight a legal case.

The lawyers have launched a crowdfunder which aims to raise £15,000 to help them obtain an injunction to stop a litigant bombarding them with abusive emails.

Marian Okunola was sentenced to six months in prison for contempt of court after she breached an injunction not to harass members of staff at her former employer, Titan Wealth Holdings Limited.

She widened her target to include Titan’s lawyers at Quinn Emanuel, sending them emails which were described as “abusive, and often sexually explicit” by Mrs Justice Hill at a hearing to consider the grant of another injunction.

Quinn Emanuel disputes partner Yasseen Gailani laid out 103 pages of Okunola’s emails to make his point, which the judge agreed were “repetitive, at times pointless”, and which included “gratuitously distressing and demeaning content”.

They also came in the established Loon font of “all bold capitals, large text and with repeated exclamation marks” which the judge said “added to their threatening nature”.

Okunola’s "threatening" and "sexually abusive" content was aimed at people linked to the lawyers as well, including Gailani’s mother.

When Gailani told Okunola he was not going to respond to her “egregious and highly abusive” e-mails and would make a police complaint, she reported him to the police the next day herself, alleging that he had lied, perverted the course of justice and engaged in witness intimidation.

Her “shocking” conduct extended to the court room, said Justice Hill. When “I rose on 9 October 2024, in front of court staff, the Defendant repeatedly shouted ‘scum’ at junior counsel and the rest of the Claimants’ legal team, ending her outburst with ‘injunct that’”, she said.

But she rejected Titan’s application to expand the injunction to protect its lawyers, ruling that Quinn would have to seek an injunction itself. However, she also granted leave to appeal her decision.

Shaking the tin for donations on LinkedIn, Gailani said his firm had agreed to act pro bono on an appeal, for which he gave “huge thanks to the London management team”.

Apparently paying for the barristers was a step too far for the impoverished multi-millionaires heading up the firm. While the two barristers engaged on the matter have agreed to appear in the appeal for free, the targeted solicitors have been reduced to crowdfunding £15k from Joe Public to pay for their barristers’ fees and disbursements.

In Gailani’s crowdfunder pitch for "Court of Appeal Proceedings to Protect Lawyers from Abuse", he desribed how "the abuse the team endured in this case was grotesque and wholly unacceptable". 

"With luck, if we are successful on the appeal, the risk of legal representatives suffering similar abuse in the future in other cases will be very significantly reduced."

Asked why the firm wasn’t stumping up the equivalent of a week’s coffee budget to help protect its staff from harassment, a spokesperson for Quinn Emanuel told RollOnFriday, "The firm has already made a significant contribution towards funding the costs of the appeal by agreeing to conduct it on a pro bono basis. In relation to the remaining costs, several of our partners have either made, or will be making, material donations to the fund".

At the time of writing, the lawyers had raised £3,580 from 16 pledges.