It's been over six months since former Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered his report on Russia's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election to U.S. Attorney General William Barr, and the storied attorney is again the subject of daily headlines.

The announcement Tuesday that Mueller is returning to Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr as a partner is the exception; it's a story of Mueller's own making. The others—"Trump may have lied to Mueller, House Democrats say," "Trump Pressed Australian Leader to Help Barr Investigate Mueller Inquiry's Origins," to cite two from just Monday—owe to the intensified scrutiny around President Donald Trump's use of high-level diplomacy on behalf of his own personal political objectives as the House begins its impeachment inquiry. 

There's little surprising about Mueller, along with special counsel team members Aaron Zebley and James Quarles, returning to Wilmer, where all three previously held partnerships. Beyond the question of familiarity, the firm has a longstanding reputation for expertise in investigations.

"It's one of the core elements of our brand," Wilmer co-managing partner Robert Novick said Tuesday.

Thanks to a track record that dates back to the Enron scandal at the turn of the century, Novick does not believe that the current climate in Washington is prompting his firm and competitors alike to increase the value they place on investigations firepower.

"I don't connect the business opportunities for this kind of work with anything going on with the current administration," he said. "There's been investigations work coming up in all kinds of contexts for the past 20 years. It's a stable part of the law firm business model through time."

Most premier law firms would be happy to add a former special counsel, FBI director or U.S. attorney for a prime region like Northern California to their roster. With Mueller, Wilmer gets all three. The 75-year-old also will undoubtedly present mentorship opportunities for rising attorneys.

"He's had so many life and practice experiences from being an assistant U.S. attorney to a U.S. attorney to FBI director to the role of special counsel to private practitioner," Novick said. "There are many, many lawyers at the firm looking forward to working with him or working with him again."

Millennials in particular, who've come to the practice of law in an era more attuned to the question of work-life balance, might chafe at Mueller's legendary work ethic. A 2008 magazine profile told the story of his time serving as acting deputy attorney general in 2001. On the Monday after George W. Bush's inauguration. Mueller's own deputy arrived to find an unsigned note from the boss on his chair: "It's 0700. Where are you?"

Since Mueller and his team wrapped up their nearly two years of work investigating the connections between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia along with the question of obstruction of justice, his staff has slowly been trickling back into private practice.

Jeannie Rhee, the third Wilmer partner to join the team along with Zebley and Quarles, joined Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison's growing D.C. office as a white-collar litigation partner in June. She had been focused on the case against three Russian firms and 13 individuals charged with carrying out an alleged campaign to sow discord within the U.S. electorate.

Greg Andres, the lead trial attorney in the successful prosecution of Paul Manafort, announced his return to Davis Polk & Wardwell in May.

In July, veteran terrorism prosecutor Zainab Ahmad, who joined Mueller's team after nearly a decade in the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, landed at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York as a white-collar partner.

Andrew Weissmann, who went from fraud division chief at the U.S. Department of Justice to the Mueller team, is now a fellow at New York University School of Law. Michael Dreeben, a veteran appellate attorney for the DOJ and criminal law expert on the special counsel's team, announced his retirement from federal government service in June.

In Mueller's most recent appearance in the limelight, testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee in July, he was reluctant to divulge any details beyond referring his interlocutors to the 448-page report. The exception came when he was questioned about the impartiality of his team.

"We strove to hire those individuals that could do the job," Mueller said, in his most animated remarks of the hearing.

"I have been in this business for almost 25 years. And in those 25 years, I have not had occasion, once, to ask somebody about their political affiliation. It is not done," Mueller said. "What I care about is the capability of the individual to do the job and do the job quickly and seriously and with integrity."