Williams & Connolly was celebrating its 50th anniversary year when the "The Post" debuted in theaters in 2017. Steven Spielberg's vision of Old Washington featured Tom Hanks as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as publisher Katharine Graham, struggling to decide whether to print a cache of the Pentagon Papers.

Absent from the carousel of lawyers tussling with the newspapermen on screen was Edward Bennett Williams, the Post's longtime lawyer and Williams & Connolly's legendary co-founder. Before his death, Bradlee said he and Graham relied on Williams' advice in green-lighting publication over other lawyers' timidity. But Spielberg saw no scene for "The Man to See," a moniker bestowed on Williams by biographer Evan Thomas.

The Man to See was invisible in Hollywood. The exclusion caused "real disappointment" and "a furor among some" of Williams & Connolly's senior lawyers, according to Williams & Connolly then-chairman Dane Butswinkas. Most of the firm's current lawyers never met Williams, who died in 1988, and the firm was entering a period of transition from the founder's proteges to the next generation. But Williams' presence still looms large at the Am Law 100 firm's single office, in the Edward Bennett Williams Building in downtown D.C.

Last year, Butswinkas still chaired the firm, Kevin Hodges was managing partner, and men were in the majority on the firm's executive committee. In 2019, none of those things remain the same.

"Our view about business models and the future is, if you continue to be the best at what you do, people will call on you," Butswinkas said in an interview last spring.

Call, they did. Butswinkas was named Tesla general counsel in December 2018, creating an unexpected vacancy atop the firm. Bruce Genderson was also leaving the firm's executive committee, having surpassed a 65-year-old threshold, and Hodges' five-year term as managing partner was also coming to an end.

The firm tapped Joseph Petrosinelli to replace Butswinkas. Petrosinelli, co-chairman of the firm's products liability, criminal defense, and government investigations practice groups, first joined as a summer associate in 1990 as part of a class that included Emmet Flood, who left Williams & Connolly last year to work for President Donald Trump, and Brett Kavanaugh, who became a U.S. Supreme Court justice in 2018. (Between Kavanaugh and former associate turned current Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, the firm may be able to claim more alumni on the high court than any other firm.)

"The transition from that second generation of leadership to my generation has been seamless," Petrosinelli said in an interview. "Now you have an executive committee that, for the first time in the firm's history, does not have anyone over age 59."

Also for the first time, Williams & Connolly's executive committee is now evenly split between men and women, and has multiple minority members. Such developments came after Malachi Jones rejoined the firm as chief diversity partner last October.

Change Has Its Limits

Butswinkas returned full time to the firm from Tesla in February, and his homecoming was as unanticipated as his departure. Another recent departure seems unlikely to follow Butswinkas' boomerang: Kannon Shanmugam, former head of Williams & Connolly's Supreme Court and appellate practice, left the firm in January to start a Supreme Court and appellate practice at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Lisa Blatt

Shanmugam was famously the firm's only lateral partner hire in 32 years, and the vacancy he left paved the way for a reunion. Lisa Blatt took Shanmugam's spot, rejoining the firm from Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, after having argued more cases before the U.S. Supreme Court than any other woman. Blatt's move was not viewed as truly an external lateral hire by those at Williams & Connolly, as Blatt's husband, David Blatt, is a partner at the firm, meaning she was also a regular presence at firm functions.

Following Blatt's lead, Williams & Connolly also added Sarah Harris as a partner on the appellate team from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel. She was also previously a partner at Arnold & Porter.

The firm's homegrown culture may not be changing, but its clientele is. Technology and internet companies, such as Intel and Google, have increasingly called on the D.C. firm in the last decade, and are among the firm's largest clients. Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk recently replaced Williams & Connolly with Los Angeles-based Hueston Hennigan after Butswinkas and Tesla parted ways, but Williams & Connolly continues to find new business out west.

"The firm is going gangbusters," Petrosinelli said. "We have this incredible stable of corporate clients that continue to grow in different areas, particularly on the West Coast."

Still, the firm's leaders insist Williams & Connolly has no plans of expanding its geographical footprint beyond the capital. The digital age has made it easier for clients anywhere to interact with the firm's lawyers remotely, and the firm continues to operate from its single home base.

That—and the firm's continued commitment to being a litigation-first firm—puts Williams & Connolly in rarefied air among Am Law 100 firms. Jeffrey Lowe, Major, Lindsey & Africa's managing partner in D.C., said Williams & Connolly's success amid the rapidly changing legal environment is a credit to the firm, but he wonders if it is a sustainable model.

"The question becomes, is there still a place for that in the world going forward?" Lowe said, noting, "there's no doubt they're definitely considered a pre-eminent litigation shop."

Williams & Connolly has ranked in the top 80 of the Am Law 200 for the last three years, with its revenues inching above the $400 million threshold in 2016 and continuing upward since, according to ALM data. Since the firm cracked the Am Law 100 in 2009 at 93, its revenue per lawyer has exceeded the average top-100 firm every year. The firm's year-over-year revenue growth, as measured by percentage change, however, has not exceeded the average Am Law 100 firm since 2014, when the firm reached its highest ranking on the Am Law 100 list, 70. Last year, the firm ranked 78.

Williams & Connolly is adapting, including by ditching downtown D.C. for the Wharf, a waterfront neighborhood along the Potomac River in southwest D.C. The firm plans to move in 2022 and agreed to a 15-year lease to occupy 300,000 square feet in two commercial towers. The move was motivated by its expiring lease in the Edward Bennett Williams Building, and its head count outgrowing its offices there. In 1975, the firm had 30 lawyers and three partners. Now, there are more than 300 total lawyers, including more than 100 partners.

Correction: An earlier version of this report published in the April issue of The National Law Journal incorrectly identified Joseph Petrosinelli.

Ryan Lovelace is based in Washington, D.C., and covers the intersection of law firm business, lobbying and the federal government. Contact him at [email protected]. On Twitter: @lovelaceryand