Firm Finance: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld

Dallas-based Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld posted 2010 gross revenue of $736.5 million, a 2.5 percent increase compared to $718.8 million gross revenue in 2009. The firm’s net income came in at $273.1 million, a 10.6 percent improvement over the previous year’s net income of $247 million. “We see the market coming back a bit, and, in our case, we had another very active year in our financial-restructuring practice and really a spectacular year across the firm in our corporate practice,” says firm chairman R. Bruce McLean of Washington, D.C. During the first quarter of 2010, the firm’s Houston office represented Consol Energy Inc. of Canonsburg, Pa., in its $3.5 billion acquisition of the Appalachian exploration and production business of Dominion Resources Inc. of Richmond, Va. The firm’s Dallas office handled a $7 billion deal for client Bridas Corp. of Buenos Aires when it bought BP PLC of London’s 60 percent stake in Pan American Energy of Buenos Aires, he says. Average profits per partner were $1,606,000 in 2010, and revenue per lawyer averaged $939,000. PPP and RPL are calculated using a full-year average FTE (full-time equivalent) of 784 lawyers and 170 equity partners. “In 2009, we had six months’ benefit of very significant cost-cutting and the reduction in force of about 50 lawyers,” McLean says. “In 2010, we had the full year’s benefit of that.” An improved economy, loosening credit markets and a national and international focus on shale resources generated an increased amount of deals in 2010, says Christine B. LaFollette, partner in charge of the firm’s Houston office. “We’ve been going gangbusters,” she says. “We also saw a lot of movement of [energy] assets in transactions,” she says. Activity in the intellectual property arena also was up in 2010, she says. Last year the firm had lawyers representing a group of manufacturers in the wireless industry in Minerva Industries Inc. v. Motorola Inc., et al. , in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, LaFollette says. “We led the industry defense over the invention of the smart-phone technology.”