Jenner & Block office sign (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

Jenner & Block's gross revenue inched up by 1.5% last year to $448 million, pumping the brakes on a slide that's been underway since the firm's revenues crested in 2015.

Head count dipped slightly to a total of 461 lawyers as the Chicago-based counted nine fewer nonequity partners last year. Revenue per lawyer rose 2.9% to $972,000, with profits per equity partner up 5.8% to about $1.6 million.

Jenner's new co-managing partners cast several departures from the firm in a positive light, saying many of them were partners who went to go work for the federal government, became a judge or became in-house counsel for their clients.

"One thing we foster and value very strongly is commitment to public service," said Katya Jestin, a co-managing partner at Jenner. "I know we had a number of departures to the government, to judgeships. That's something that happens here, and we're always proud of lawyers who leave to join others on the bench."

Those government and in-house counsel departures include Ken Doroshow, who became the chief legal officer of the Recording Industry Association of America; Brandon Fox, who became the chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles; and Elizabeth Coleman, Uber's new associate general counsel for litigation.

Two of Jenner's partners also joined the federal bench—Kenneth Lee, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Gabriel Fuentes, to U.S. district court in Chicago.

Randy Mehrberg, Jenner's other co-managing partner, noted that he himself has joined Jenner three separate times over the course of his legal career. Thomas Perrelli, the firm's new chairman, left Jenner twice for different roles at the U.S. Department of Justice and then rejoined the firm.

Last year saw various leadership changes at Jenner. In January 2019, Craig Martin took over for Anton "Tony" Valukas, who stepped down in 2017 after a 10-year run. Martin stepped down from that role and Jenner appointed Perrelli in his place last week.

In September 2019, Jenner announced that Jestin and Mehrberg would take over the managing partner position from Terrence Truax. Jestin is a New York investigations partner, and Mehrberg is a Chicago partner who also co-chairs Jenner's energy practice.

The firm is already looking ahead toward a bright 2020. In February, the firm's New York office scooped two high-profile partners from Boies Schiller Flexner: Lee Wolosky and Dawn Smalls, who are serving as the independent monitors of Deutsche Bank, which was accused of doing business on behalf of U.S.-sanctioned countries and allowing billions of dollars to move out of Russia.

Then in March, Jenner added a third Boies Schiller partner: Douglas Mitchell, who has worked with Wolosky in freezing more than $2 billion in Iranian assets on behalf of terrorism victims.

Part of Jenner's practice includes monitorships. Jestin attributed some of the firm's uneven growth over the past couple of years due to adding—and shedding—lawyers as monitorships come and go.

"We scale up to deal with a huge monitorship," Jestin said, before adding that the firm also scales down when a monitorship is finished. "We do have to flex our joints."

Last year, Jenner lawyers secured a victory for the stepdaughter of famed American author John Steinbeck before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. As the executor of the estate of Steinbeck's late third wife, Waverly Scott Kaffaga has been embroiled in various legal fights with other Steinbeck heirs over the rights to works from the "Of Mice and Men" author.

Jenner also represented Diamond Castle Partners, a New York private equity firm, in the $2.5 billion acquisition of Multi-Color Corp., a Cincinnati label company, by Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity. Diamond Castle owned 12.2% of Multi-Color.

The firm also touted its pro bono work: In 2019, The American Lawyer listed Jenner as the No. 1 U.S. law firm for pro bono hours logged the prior year. In one pro bono case, Jenner lawyers represented two other lawyers who tried to withdraw as counsel to Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, after learning the U.S. government had been spying on their communications.

A military judge had ordered the two lawyers to keep serving as counsel or face arrest. The case eventually made its way to the D.C. Circuit, where the appeals court overturned the military judge's order, allowing the lawyers to withdraw.

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