Unlike its larger rivals, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s labor and employment department doesn’t boast legions of lawyers. In fact, only 60 of the firm’s 1,000-plus lawyers spend a majority of their time on the specialty.

“We don’t win the volume contest,” says Eugene Scalia, a former solicitor of the U.S. Department of Labor who coheads the practice group from the Washington, D.C., office, “and we’re actually kind of proud of that.”