Welcome to another edition of our Litigation Leaders series, featuring the litigation practice heads of the leading firms in the country. 

Meet John Desmarais, the founding partner of intellectual property trial boutique Desmarais LLP, who is based in New York. Desmarais spent his early legal career at IP firm Fish & Neave before serving a three-year stint as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York then returning to the firm. In 1997 he joined Kirkland & Ellis as a partner. From 2004 to 2009 he served on Kirkland’s management committee. In 2010 he founded the boutique that bears his name, which has grown to more than 70 lawyers focused on complex IP disputes, often in technology with offices in New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Desmarais won Litigator of the Week honors back in 2018 for getting an $82.5 million verdict from a Delaware federal jury for client IBM in a patent infringement case against Groupon.