Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr offices at 1875 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C., Oct. 3, 2012. Photo Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr posted profits per partner eclipsing $2 million for the first time in 2017, amid a roughly 5 percent contraction in the size of the firm's equity partnership.

Average partner profits ticked up nearly 14 percent to $2.12 million last year, with strong performance across nearly all of the firm's practices, according to co-managing partner Bob Novick.

“It really was a very strong year for our litigation and investigations practices, [and] international arbitration as well was very active, so all of the controversy practices and the investigations practices were strong last year,” Novick said. “We also had some very good work in the transactional area.”

He added: “On the transactional side you probably have more activity generally speaking because there's more money in the economy, there's more people doing deals.”

Last year's record per-partner profits were achieved as Wilmer reported a more than $42 million increase in net income, to $544.2 million total, while the size of the all-equity partnership decreased by 13 partners, or 4.8 percent. Wilmer said its total lawyer head count decreased by 18 lawyers to 869 in 2017.

The firm's top-line growth was modest in 2017, with gross revenues climbing less than 1 percent to $1.137 billion, and revenue per lawyer rising 2.7 percent to nearly $1.31 million.

Novick touted his firm's work for Apple Inc., Intel Corp. and multiple victories against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2017. Wilmer successfully represented Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his effort to get securities fraud charges dismissed by a federal judge, and the firm helped New Mexico-based Thornburg Mortgage beat a fraud case stemming from the 2008 financial crisis. Novick also said Wilmer's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act team persuaded federal officials to “walk away from a number of matters they were investigating.”

He said many of the firm's victories were attributable to the strength of its female attorneys across all practices. Novick said approximately 60 percent of the firm's investigatory matters were handled by women, a majority of the public offerings it was involved in were led by women, and women argued 13 of its appellate court arguments—including two before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“[W]hen we look at the work we did last year, literally half of the cases that we tried were led by or co-led by women,” Novick said. “So it's a firm that cares deeply about diversity; gender diversity as well as racial and other diversity. And it's not only who we are as a culture, but to some extent the kind of work that we think about is in spaces where anti-discrimination, harassment, other issues present themselves.”

On the hiring front last year, Novick pointed to a pair of additions in the Mountain West region as particularly noteworthy: Former U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado John Walsh joined the firm to lead the Denver office's litigation practice, and Keith Trammel also joined in Denver to establish a corporate practice there. Wilmer's Denver office is still relatively new to the firm, having opened in 2014 under the leadership of former U.S. Senator and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Back in Washington, D.C., Wilmer's government and regulatory affairs practice added Andrew Shipley, a top government contracts lawyer who worked in-house at Northrop Grumman Corp. for 16 years and served as assistant general counsel, left Perkins Coie for Wilmer in January 2018. And last fall, former deputy CIA Director David Cohen rejoined the firm to counsel clients on issues involving national security, cybersecurity and anti-money laundering matters. Cohen was the CIA's second highest-ranking official during the final two years of the Obama administration.

Cohen's addition may have helped the firm offset the loss of former partner Robert Mueller, who took three other Wilmer partners with him when he left the firm to serve as special counsel investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The lawyers departing with Mueller were active in Wilmer's cybersecurity and privacy practice, according to Novick, and have experience working on governmental investigations ranging from Watergate to pre-9/11 al-Qaida.

Mueller's probe of Trump officials' ties to Russian nationals led to Wilmer stepping away from its representation of President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

But the Mueller team's exit didn't keep Wilmer from getting involved in other matters related to Russian meddling in U.S. politics. Novick noted that the firm represented Facebook Inc. in front of Congress on several hearings over Russian election interference.

Wilmer also represented Chicago and other clients in legal challenges to the Trump administration's immigration policies. It dedicated 6.5 percent of its billable time to pro bono work last year, according to Novick, including on matters such as representing the creator of “Pepe the Frog” in an effort to reclaim the character from white supremacists who turned the character into an internet meme for their alt-right cause.

“We do work that isn't always popular” Novick said. “But it is, we think, in the finest traditions of the profession and of the firm to take on work for people and causes that aren't always popular in the world and sometimes not even uniformly in our own law firm.”

Any unpopular legal work is likely made easier for partners by the knowledge that big bucks are often headed their way. Outsiders caught a glimpse of partners' potential earnings when Wilmer securities litigator Gail Ennis was appointed to a Social Security Administration post in 2017 and disclosed $2 million in partnership income.