Dickstein Shapiro faced its worst year in more than a decade after contingency cases didn’t pull in income and the firm restructured. Gross revenue declined by $51 million, to $207.5 million in 2013, a 19.7 percent drop. Net income fell even further, by almost 35 percent, from $55 million in 2012 to $36 million in 2013. That number is the lowest net income the Washington, D.C., firm has posted since prior to 1998, the first year for which The American Lawyer compiled financial statistics for Second Hundred firms.
“We’ve got a portfolio of contingency cases,” says chairman James Kelly. “The time of investment of those cases and recovery can vary from year to year. Just because you work a case in a particular year doesn’t mean you get paid on a case in a particular year.”
