Patton Boggs’s gross revenue was relatively flat in 2010, but the firm posted upticks of roughly 5% in revenue per lawyer and profits per partner, according to figures released by the firm today.
Patton Boggs saw its RPL climb from $630,000 to $659,000 last year—an increase of 4.6%. PPP went from $840,000 to $884,000, marking an increase of 5.2%.
Because the Washington firm’s gross revenue climbed by just 1.6% to $337.3 million last year, the increases to RPL and PPP came because there were fewer lawyers at the firm. In 2010, Patton Boggs reported a net loss of 15 lawyers and 10 partners, dropping to 527 and 116 , respectively.
Firm managing partner Edward Newberry said that the firm’s increases came as a result of “steady” showings in the firm’s largest practice: litigation, which accounted for 42% of the firm’s revenue. Newberry said that the firm’s corporate practice, which had been slow for the last two years, saw a “sharp increase” in the last quarter of 2010.
Despite the lag in regulatory work that many firms have seen in the past two years as the Obama administration and Congress failed to implement massive regulatory overhauls, Newberry said that the firm has seen “strong” performances in its regulatory practices. He highlighted the firm’s financial services, technology, communications and energy regulatory practices as examples. Earlier this month, Patton Boggs made a splashy hire for its infrastructure practice in Richard Ornitz, who headed DLA Piper’s American infrastructure practice. Ornitz joined Patton Boggs’ New York office.
But the real performer, Newberry said, has been the firm’s lobbying practice. That practice was aided by the June acquisition of the Breaux Lott Leadership Group. According to the 2009 Influence 50 survey, The National Law Journal’s annual ranking of lobbying shops by revenue, the bipartisan firm led by former Sens. John Breaux (D-La.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.) brought in revenues of $11.2 million. The Breaux Lott Leadership Group’s clients included Chevron USA Inc., Citigroup, Diageo, FedEx Corp., Goldman Sachs Group and a host of others. Patton Boggs’ existing lobbying practice has such clients as AT&T Services Inc., the Association of American Railroads, Bloomberg L.P., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Burger King Corp. and the city of Los Angeles.
“Our lobbying group was up over the previous year before the addition of the Breaux Lott Group,” Newberry said. “But that group’s strong performance was added to the top of that.”
Newberry said that the firm has also seen upticks in its realization rate of bills sent to clients. He said that while the firm is still “just shy” of its historical averages, last year’s realization rate was “better than the previous year.”
As for the coming year, Newberry said that the firm plans to make hires in a number of practices, including in its litigation and public policy practices. He said that continuing to increase the firm’s presence in New York is a “top priority.” The firm has 22 lawyers in New York.
“We feel we had a very solid year in 2010 and are positioned to have another very solid year in 2011,” Newberry said.
Following a change in our methodology for the 2011 Am Law 200, Patton Boggs’ 2009 numbers have been recalculated to reflect a full-year head count. All year-on-year percentage changes are based on those recalculated numbers.
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