Morrison & Foerster (MoFo) saw its financial performance slide last year, after ticking upward in 2015.

Gross revenue at the firm slipped 3.5% to $945m (£758m), as revenue per lawyer dropped 4.8% to $990,000 (£794,000).

Profits per equity partner also decreased 9.3% to $1.41m (£1.13m), even though MoFo's equity partner headcount fell to 232, a 4% decline from 2015. That marked the fourth consecutive year that MoFo shed more equity partners than it added.

MoFo chairman and executive partner Larren Nashelsky, who has held the top leadership role at the firm since 2012, said the resolution of several significant matters in 2015 contributed to last year's slowdown.

"We made significant investments in 2016 coming off a strong financial performance in 2015," Nashelsky said. "We're delighted with how we finished the year."

MoFo's headcount rose 1.6% to 956 in 2016 as the firm made 28 lateral partner hires. Nashelsky said that number was higher than usual for MoFo. He attributed the drop in the firm's equity partner ranks to "the normal transition" of lawyers retiring and moving to in-house positions, and not a strategic decision by the firm to reduce the size of the partnership.

"I would say the decline is really insubstantial compared to the overall number," Nashelsky said.

Many of MoFo's hires last year were in Washington DC, where the firm added 11 partners, including an eight-partner government contracts team that defected from Jenner & Block. MoFo added hired Kathryn Thomson, a former general counsel at the US Department of Transportation, to chair its transportation industry group in the nation's capital. In New York, partners Jonathan Levine and Dennis Jenkins joined the firm's bankruptcy practice, which Nashelsky said saw particularly strong demand in 2016.

The American Lawyer reported in January on MoFo's addition of former US Department of Justice official John Carlin to lead the firm's new global risk and crisis management practice in New York, where MoFo recruited another former Obama administration lawyer earlier this month.

However, in MoFo's backyard on the US west coast, the firm saw an 11-strong patent team leave for Cooley, a group that included star partner Mika Reiner Mayer. Despite those defections, Nashelsky said that MoFo has a strong bench that it is looking to expand.

"We still believe we have the strongest patent practice in the country," Nashelsky said. "We continue to look at building out that group."

Nashelsky said previous investments in the firm's M&A practice paid off in 2016, as MoFo advised on 165 transactions. The firm has been particularly busy representing Japan's SoftBank on several major deals, and MoFo also took the lead last year for Unilever on its $1bn (£802m) purchase of online razor merchant the Dollar Shave Club.

On the litigation side, Nashelsky said MoFo saw demand increase 3% year on year, noting that the firm has a healthy pipeline of matters coming into 2017. MoFo is currently representing Paul McCartney in his copyright suit against Sony/ATV Music Publishing over Beatles hits like Love Me Do and Ticket to Ride, and is defending ride-sharing behemoth Uber in its trade secrets fight with Alphabet over self-driving vehicle technology.

In 2017, MoFo is likely to continue to focus on growing in the Bay Area, New York and Washington DC, as well as in Asia, Nashelsky said.