Cooley's office in Santa Monica. Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM

Cooley grew its revenue by 8.4% in 2019, capping a decade that saw growth every single year.

The firm pulled in $1.33 billion last year, nearly three times the firm's revenue of $507 million in 2009. That translated to a revenue per lawyer figure of $1.32 million for 2019, up 1.7% from the previous year.

Profits also continued to push upwards at Cooley, with net income growing by 7.9% to $577.7 million. The firm's profits per equity partner hit $2.54 million, an increase of 6.4% from 2018.

"We're certainly proud of the year and proud of the decade we concluded," Cooley CEO Joe Conroy said. "There's been a real ascension of our boardroom brand, and our partnership's growing a lot stronger, a lot more talented, and a lot more diverse."

Conroy called 2019 an "amazing" year on the corporate side, which he said accounts for between 60% and 65% of its work. The firm's attorneys closed more than 1,000 venture financings, formed more than 300 funds, and had a hand in over 270 deals, 20 of which were valued at over $1 billion. These included Tableau's sale to Salesforce, Ellie Mae's sale to Thoma Bravo and Looker's sale to Google.

The firm's capital markets practice continued to evolve from a pure focus on the issuer side to a split between issuers and investment banks. Uber, Zoom and Levis were the highlights from a longer list of 49 IPOs.

"We have a high-level execution capability on capital markets that we certainly didn't have a decade ago," Conroy said.

Meanwhile, Cooley's litigation practice went on a hiring spree, with a focus on white-collar specialists. From the Mueller probe, the firm added prosecutor Andrew Goldstein in June and appellate litigator Elizabeth Prelogar, who left the Office of the Solicitor General in November, at the start of this year.

Other names include Travis LeBlanc, former chief of the FCC's enforcement bureau and current member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, former senior SEC official Randall Lee, and John Hemann from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. The firm also added Kathleen Hartnett, the former co-head of Boies Schiller Flexner's San Francisco office, at the end of this January.

"There hasn't been a year that we've added as much talent as well as this quality of talent," Conroy said. "We've been able to recruit a different breed of cat."

Litigation was responsible for the majority of a modest upward tick in both equity partners (1.3%) and non-equity partners (5.3%). The firm grew its overall head count by 6.6% in 2019, bringing the number of attorneys to 1,009.

Conroy also highlighted the firm's attention to diversity initiatives in recruiting and advancement, noting that diverse individuals now compose 60% of the firm's management committee and for the first time, half of the firm's new partner class for 2020 were women.

Growth also came via two new offices in Hong Kong and Brussels. The former, focused on capital markets, has already completed two initial public offerings, while the latter will be a hub for antitrust work.

"They've had faster starts than we planned for," Conroy said.

The firm also added a new Singapore office at the start of 2020, recognizing the opportunities for venture capital in Southeast Asia and India.

One area where Conroy sees slowing demand is in intellectual property litigation, where disputes involving nonpracticing entities are "in every way becoming a thing of the past," while the number of competitor on competitor cases are also declining.

"I think the trend is going to continue," he said. "There will be fewer but better and more high-profile competitor-on-competitor cases."

The firm has not been the part of any merger discussions in recent years, according to Conroy. Looking forward, Conroy said he wouldn't rule out the possibility, but also sought to minimize the likelihood.

"We have a very clear understanding of what we aspire to be. In a bifurcating world, there will one or two great law firms of the new generation, and we think w'ere going to be one of them. I'm open to a number of ways of getting there," he said. "But the execution risk on any sort of a deal, if not prohibitive, is leaning that way."

The 2019 financial figures reported in this story are preliminary. ALM will report finalized data for the Am Law 200 in The American Lawyer's May and June issues.

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