With so much uncertainty gripping Washington these days, the city's law firms have provided a few constants.

The revolving door between government and private practice hums reassuringly. Client inboxes bulge with regulatory lawyers' memos. And the same handful of plugged-in firms, packed with policy and litigation specialists, still mostly defines the legal scene in the capital.

Four of those — Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, Covington & Burling, Hogan Lovells, and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr — stand out partly for the very different strategies they embraced over the last 10 years. Whether they doubled down on government expertise, courted Manhattan or went global, they've prospered — or at least survived — amid intense competition from beyond the beltway.