Hogan Lovells is known for its knack for busting up plaintiffs' classes on behalf of big corporate defendants, but its list of victories in the past two years included an outlier for the typically defense-side firm.

Last January, it claimed victory in a pro bono case on behalf of 100 African-American Secret Service agents who said they were victims of racial discrimination.

It was an unusual position for the firm to be in, says partner Dennis Tracey. In his 17 years with the firm he  says he cannot recall a case in which Hogan Lovells represented a plaintiff class.

After 16 years of litigation, the Department of Homeland Security agreed to pay out a $24 million settlement to the agents, as well as implement reforms to its promotion system. "My daughter was born when this litigation was filed, and she just got her driver's license," says partner Catherine Stetson.

Among the pivotal points for her clients in the long-running litigation, Stetson said, was getting the class certified as well as successfully moving for a sanctions motion against the government in which the D.C. Circuit found that it destroyed documents related to the case.

Hogan Lovells' marquee wins, however, tend to be on behalf of high-profile corporate defendants, and its specialty is keeping plaintiff classes at bay.

Department Size and Revenue  Lawyers: 314 Department as Percentage of Firm: 28% Percentage of Firm Revenue, 2016: 28%

When plaintiffs obtain class certification, defendants usually start asking how much they should pay out to whom rather than whether or not they can prevail. But the firm's class action practice defeated a class of 87,000 former and retired state of Connecticut employees who sued Anthem in 2002, arguing that they, and not the state, were entitled to $100 million in proceeds from Anthem's IPO and demutualization.

This year, the Connecticut Supreme Court unanimously affirmed a trial court's ruling in Anthem's favor, earning litigation partners Craig Hoover and Adam Levin a nod from The American Lawyer in March as Litigators of the Week.

A point of pride for Hogan Lovells is its deftness at picking apart personal jurisdiction.

For example, in June, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 for its client Bristol-Myers Squibb in a widely-watched products liability case brought by a group of plaintiffs who said they were harmed by taking Plavix. The high court reversed a ruling by the Superior Court of California and found that the state courts lack personal jurisdiction over claims made by nonresidents of California.

Presenting the winning argument before the high court was star litigator and former acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who recently broke the record—an honor that he describes as bittersweet—for the most oral arguments presented to the high court by a minority lawyer. Katyal, the son of Punjabi Indian immigrants, has argued before the court 35 times, breaking the record that Thurgood Marshall set in 1967, and is set to go before the court a 36th time in January.

And during the same term, he also somehow found the time to join the front lines to fight the travel bans promulgated by the administration of President Donald Trump to close the U.S. borders to travelers from a list of Muslim majority countries, joining fellow Hogan Lovells attorney Colleen Sinzdak in persuading a federal judge in Hawaii to issue a broad temporary restraining order to halt the ban.

Tracey said that the firm's effectiveness in taking on government entities, as well as many of the strengths that it brings to courtrooms and negotiating tables, stems from its expertise in the field of regulatory litigation.

"Regulatory litigation is really our sweet spot," Tracey says. "We're happy to be known as the experts in that."

In a win on behalf of the Republic of Venezuela, Hogan Lovells successfully argued for limiting the scope of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in a suit brought by a U.S. oil and gas company that accused Venezuela of seizing several of its oil rigs in violation of international law.

And the firm isn't too bad at representing fellow attorneys. It successfully defended litigator Theodore Wells Jr. and his firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, from a defamation suit after Wells led an investigation into bullying in the Miami Dolphins locker room.