For a firm that managing partner Wade Cooper of Austin describes as, in many respects, not money-driven, Jackson Walker certainly is doing well. Cooper says 2010 was the firm’s best year ever in terms of gross revenue and net income. The firm posted a 6.4 percent increase in net income for 2010, up to $66.2 million from $62.2 million in 2009. The firm upped its gross revenue by 3 percent, rising to $178.8 million last year from $173.6 million in 2009. Cooper attributes the rise in gross revenue to a couple of things, “largely good blocking and tackling.” He says the firm sent bills in a timely fashion and paid attention to bill collection. In 2009, clients had slowed down payments, but in 2010 the firm saw a contraction in the payment cycle, he says. David T. Moran, managing partner of the firm’s Dallas office, writes in an e-mail that the firm had “record top line and bottom line numbers” with work spread among a large, diverse group of clients. Jackson Walker had “considerable success in many large, complex litigation matters, including work for Google in a couple of important class actions,” he writes, noting that firm transactional lawyers were busy with energy matters, and the banking practice remained strong. Dallas partner Robert P. Latham says the firm was up in a lot of practice areas and that its work in intellectual property litigation, particularly in the Eastern District of Texas, rose significantly. Latham says most of that work was on the defense side, but there was one plaintiffs-side matter where the return outpaced the investment. 2010 profits per partner at Jackson Walker averaged $690,000 and revenue per lawyer was $564,000. PPP and RPL are calculated using a full-year average FTE (full-time equivalent) of 317 lawyers and 96 equity partners. Cooper notes that the firm “did not RIF a bunch of associates or secretaries in order to jack up our per-partner profits.” He continues, “The rewarding thing, from my standpoint, is we did this in a way that did not damage our culture, and I think we feel really good about that.”
See ” Turning the Corner: The Worst Appears to Be Over for Texas Firms“
