Litigation firm Kasowitz Benson Torres saw both revenue and profits per partner fall last year, which founder Marc Kasowitz partly attributed to the exit of a real estate transactions team.

Still, Kasowitz in an interview sounded confident about the firm's future business, noting the pandemic has touched off a flurry of work and economic crises tend to spur litigation.

The New York firm's gross revenue decreased 4.6% to $216.8 million last year, a drop of about $10.5 million from the year before. As head count fell 7.4% to 237 lawyers, revenue per lawyer rose 2.8% to $906,000. Meanwhile, net income fell 11% to $68.4 million, prompting average profits per partner to drop by 7.8% to $1.9 million for its 36 equity partners.

Speaking from his home in Florida earlier this month, Kasowitz said the departure of a real estate group — about 15 lawyers who moved to Vinson & Elkins, including three partners — more than offset the litigation practice's financial success in 2019.

Kasowitz said the lateral group exit and the exit of a lawyer who went in-house in 2019 left a "hole in our practice." He said other teams, such as white-collar and government relations, did well but not enough to grow the firm's top line compared with the last full year with the real estate group.

Kasowitz Benson Torres financials

"I bring in a lot of work, and I brought in a lot of work last year, too, that ended up making up for most of what we ended up losing, but not for all of it, so that's kind of how we ended up short," he said.

As for 2020, Kasowitz said there are many unknowns about the year ahead. While the second quarter's revenue will probably be lower, he said he'd bet that 2020 as a whole will be better than 2019.

"There's so much that's unknown about what's going to happen from the crisis," he said. "But if I had to bet … I think we're definitely going to be better. I think we'll be one of the places … where the work will really increase."

In the year to come, the firm anticipates an array of major litigation around the world, including cases that had been pending when the pandemic struck. Partner Ron Rossi said he's helping a major insurance company with a nine-figure professional indemnity case in the Danish Institute of Arbitration and is advising on some 15 lawsuits filed by the Irish Department of Education against an insured.

Jessica Taub Rosenberg, a partner in the employment practice, said her team has been helping clients nonstop with questions about furloughs and other employment impacts. And partner Sheron Korpus said Mahindra, the Indian conglomerate and a client, is trying to assess the impact on its businesses and disputes, including an action before the International Trade Commission that was put on hold because of the crisis.

"I have a lot of international clients," he said. "Because this is a global crisis, it's a little bit like the global financial crisis, in that everybody's in the same boat, and we're getting calls from all kinds of places."

While revenue declined, the firm stayed busy last year. Kasowitz Benson did major work for securities and financial services industry clients such as MBIA, the bond insurer, which went to trial in a long-running put-back case against Credit Suisse last fall with $741 million on the line. Kasowitz lawyers also repped Astra Asset Management in a $55 million dispute with Goldman Sachs that was settled on the eve of trial in an unusual proceeding in Minnesota state court.

Some of Kasowitz Benson's biggest client matters with major developments last year were handled by its California offices. For instance, the firm's lawyers on the West Coast helped Genting Malaysia Bhd., a theme park developer that was working with 21st Century Fox on a major project outside Kuala Lumpur, settle a major dispute with its partner, and in March, it won a $179 million arbitration award — again, against Fox — on behalf of two stars and a producer of the show "Bones" who claimed they'd been stiffed on their share of licensing fees.

The firm has represented two major generic-drug makers: Teva Pharmaceuticals in price-fixing litigation being fought in federal court in Pennsylvania, and Zydus Cadila and a U.S. subsidiary in multiple patent-infringement actions. It's also worked on other intellectual property disputes against the likes of Apple and Roku, with the latter case, on behalf of MV3 Partners, set to go to trial in Waco later this year, Kasowitz said in his interview.

Kasowitz Benson wasn't the only litigation-focused firm to report a down year. Revenue at Boies Schiller Flexner fell from $420 million to $405 million last year, the American Lawyer reported, and the biggest litigation-only shop in the country, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, was flat. Irell & Manella, the California firm known for its intellectual property focus, has been shrinking.