Richard Benenson, with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck will have a new managing partner, Rich Benenson, beginning July 1. The firm celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018, and Benenson is spending the first six months of 2019 transitioning to the role previously held by Adam Agron, who helmed the firm since 2013.

Brownstein clocked in at 153rd place in the latest Am Law 200 rankings, with more than $179 million in gross annual revenue in 2017 (The firm's 2018 revenues have not yet been reported). It's largest office by attorney head count is in Denver, and its western roots are well known, but Brownstein is increasingly a player in the nation's capital, especially on the lobbying front. Federal lobbying disclosures show that Brownstein recorded the second-largest federal lobbying revenue in 2018 at $31.6 million.

Benenson, who splits his time between Denver and Washington, said he has chaired or co-chaired just about every committee at the firm in his 17 years there and has been part of the executive committee for the last three years. He said there are no “macro” changes to the firm's strategy on the horizon, but he talked with The National Law Journal about what to expect, particularly in the D.C. market, in the years to come. He said the firm is in “growth mode” in the midst of a “perpetual hiring cycle” in Washington.

The following conversation with Benenson has been edited for length and clarity.

How do you envision things changing for Brownstein in D.C.?

I guess I could give you two answers to that: One, my observation has been that this level of uncertainty with our federal government and our federal agencies has led to a fair amount of, I would call it, angst in the market. And that in turn has created some opportunities, I think, for firms inside the Beltway, including ours. My strong sense of the market right now is there are a lot of decision-makers that are really demanding the best insight, the best direction, the best strategy, the best support that they can find in trying to navigate what are, I think, really unchartered waters. This is a fairly unique dynamic. I think that's creating some opportunity for us.

Point number two, our approach in Washington has always been about bipartisan, bicameral skill sets. That has allowed us to weather political storms in a way that's been very effective. We've not overinvested on one side or the other, or on one house or the other. And so as a result, as Congress changed a couple of months ago, I thought we were very well positioned.

By way of example, we had already hired [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi's chief of staff, sensing that their might be a shift in the House. We think there might be additional opportunities with the changes, and we've prepared for those in advance. So a lot of that we were anticipating, we prepared for, and were ready to execute on as it's all happening. Obviously the government shutdown creates its own set of challenges because the wheels aren't turning at all, but I am personally pleased, and I'm sure my colleagues in D.C. are pleased, to see at least this three-week window in the hopes that we can get the government back open permanently.

Are there other areas nationally or internationally that you might consider as possible areas of expansion?

If it were client-driven, we would be open to that for sure. A good example that I could point out to you around how our strategy has evolved is our new tax group in Washington—sort of a hybrid of a government relations and traditional legal advocacy group of attorneys dealing with high-level tax and policy issues. That's a nice supplement to our traditional GR strengths, government relations strengths, in that office. So in that regard, I do see additional work, and there is some strategy around building out around that core practice group in a way that helps to foster their success but also expand the opportunities for our clients and our client base.

Those sorts of very traditional inside-the-Beltway practices remain interesting to us, and we think over time we'll round out those practices in our Washington, D.C., office.

Are there areas that you've identified for lateral hiring, and what kinds of laterals are you looking for?

One sort of work-in-progress for us is telecom. We have a strong base of extraordinary telecom clients in the lobbying space, and we've already hired one and are actively interviewing another traditional telecom lawyer that we think will help us better service those clients and provide a more robust set of skill sets around problem-solving for those clients and also enable us to enlarge our offering so it's not just traditional lobbying work, but we can add to that effective legal advocacy work, in particular at the SEC with rule-making with those petitions and those proceedings. That's probably our most recent example of what we're trying to do in terms of adding supplemental practices around the core of what we're doing currently in Washington.

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