When Omar Qureshi and Will Horowitz were law school housemates, even long days of classes, clinic work, papers, and exams left them wanting more. So on many evenings, worn out but not done, they would settle onto the couch in their East Palo Alto rental and cue up trial videos on YouTube or Courtroom View Network.

Laptops open, dinner balanced on their laps, they watched intently, dissecting whatever cross-examination or argument they had pulled up on the screen. “We were obsessed,” remembers Qureshi, a Missouri native who came to Stanford Law “100 percent sure” he wanted to be a plaintiff-side trial lawyer. “I would think, ‘To get paid money to do that job? What could be better?’”

There was actually one thing that would make it better. What if they could try cases with each other and some of their Stanford Law friends? 

While plaintiff-side career paths have been increasing in popularity over the last decade, the whole idea still “sounded far-fetched,” Horowitz says. “You don’t see many people fresh out of law school deciding they’ll build a plaintiffs firm with their friends. But we talked about it a lot.”

After graduation in 2018, each of them moved into the kind of work that would eventually bring the idea within reach. After short stints with law firms, Qureshi launched his own firm, Qureshi Law, determined to start trying cases as quickly as he could. Horowitz practiced mass torts and securities litigation with two large firms. Meanwhile, their class of 2018 friend Max Schoening was working as a federal public defender in San Diego.  

In 2022, while still a solo practitioner, Qureshi won a $45 million verdict for two disabled children in an abuse case against the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. It was a major win that started him thinking that the next step might be to bring in lawyers he trusted. 

Soon after, those late-night, trial video-fueled conversations from law school became a reality: Horowitz and Schoening joined Qureshi at his Los Angeles-based firm, where the three Stanford Law alums now handle civil rights, race discrimination, police brutality, jail and prison abuses, child abuse by schools and other institutions, and wrongful death and personal injury cases.

In October 2025, the firm secured a $42.75 million civil rights verdict for the family of Erie Moore Sr., who died after guards slammed him to the ground in a privately run Louisiana jail. The New York Times reported on the landmark verdict, calling it the largest civil rights verdict in Louisiana history and the largest ever against a private correctional company.  

“When Max and Will started less than two years ago, I thought: one day we’re going to try big civil rights cases and win verdicts against huge companies,” Qureshi says. “And then for that to happen so quickly is really amazing.”

The three lawyers attribute their success to their shared values and collective Stanford Law experiences. In the Moore case, when a tricky evidentiary question arose mid-hearing, Schoening, who kept his outline from Professor David Sklansky’s Evidence class on his laptop, was able to flip to the right page and craft a response on the spot. 

“We were literally relying on our Stanford notes in a Louisiana courtroom,” he says with a laugh.

“Those must have been some notes!” Sklansky says. “Max got a class prize in Evidence, but this is a good deal more impressive.”  Sklansky remembers all three lawyers fondly.  “I’d love to claim some credit for their success,” he adds, “but the truth is that they were all terrific students.”

Litigation as Storytelling

The three met at the start of their 1L year. Qureshi and Horowitz became friends quickly—same small section, same apartment, same fixation on trials. Schoening moved in overlapping public interest circles and was carving a path focused on immigrants’ rights. He spent his summers with the Bronx Defenders, the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, and organizations representing asylum seekers in South Texas. 

Qureshi’s main extracurricular, though, wasn’t a clinic or journal but stand-up comedy. Many nights he was performing in clubs around the Bay Area, and by his 3L year, he was touring nationally with “The Moth,” the storytelling organization with a National Public Radio show.

 “Omar is a gifted storyteller, and that translates directly to trial work,” Schoening says. The firm’s litigation style reflects Qureshi’s storytelling sensibility. They run constant focus groups, often in their downtown L.A. office, walking ordinary people through case theories, themes, timelines, and visuals. 

“We treat everything like practice for trial: depositions, openings, witness prep,” Qureshi says. “Stand-up taught me that if the setup isn’t clean, the punchline won’t land. It’s the same with cross-examination and so much else that happens during a trial.”

‘It Doesn’t Get Better’

Their approach to trial work is matched by an equally deliberate approach to the cases they take.

“If we’re going to pour years of our lives into something, it has to matter,” Horowitz says. “We’re in a rare position to choose our cases, and we think a lot about how we use that freedom.”

Their time at Stanford Law helped shape that orientation. “Being around such committed faculty and classmates made us want to do high-quality work on things that actually matter,” he says. “We want to be the lawyers clients can trust with the most serious problems they’ll ever have.”

Growth is on the horizon, and yes, they would love to bring in more fellow alumni. But for now, the improbable idea that started on a law school couch still feels slightly unreal.

“Sometimes I still think, how is this our job?” Qureshi says. “We get to do work we care about, with people we trust, and take on cases that can make a real difference. It doesn’t get better than that.”