Hogan Lovells Posts 26% Profit Growth After Oracle, IBM Work

Hogan Lovells grew profits per equity partner 26% last year as it gained from guiding merger and acquisition deals for companies such as Oracle Corp.

Firm revenue increased 13%, with Hogan Lovells seeing workload growth during the pandemic in areas including litigation, government regulation and intellectual property.

“The key to our success is balance, balance, balance,” Hogan Lovells Chief Executive Officer Miguel Zaldivar said in an inteview.

Zaldivar becomes the latest top 100 firm leader to describe stellar 2021 results. Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft saw revenue jump 35% to $609 million last year, and profits per equity partner increase by 72% to more than $4 million. Greenberg Traurig grew revenue 17% from a year ago, surpassing $2 billion for the first time.

The results aren’t surprising given that firms reduced overhead costs such as travel during the pandemic, and home-bound lawyers often worked more hours than usual, said Susan Hackett, CEO of the consultancy Legal Executive Leadership.

“How could they not make more money?” she said in a written statement. “I’d be worried if they hadn’t.”

Hogan increased profits per equity partner to almost $2.5 million while growing revenue to $2.6 billion from $2.3 billion, the firm reported. Revenue per lawyer grew 16.5% to more than $1 million.

The firm gained from handling Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner Corp., a $28.3 billion deal that aims to provide a health care customer base to spur Oracle’s cloud-computing business.

Hogan also assisted IBM Corp.‘s reorganization of its managed infrastructure services business, ahead of its spinoff into Kyndryl. It aided Papa John’s International Inc. in its dismissal of a securities class action in the Southern District of New York.

Profits rose not just due to general workload growth, but also because of more efficient bill collection and revamped lease agreements for many of its offices, Zaldivar said.

Hogan’s numbers of equity and non-equity partners held steadier during 2021 in comparison to the previous year. The number of equity partners fell to 391 from 412, while the number of non-equity partners rose to 384 from 381.

The firm in its report a year ago said the number of equity partners fell to 412 from 536 in 2019, as the number of non-equity partners rose to 381 from 265.