Net income came in at $292.5 million, up 21.2% from $241.3 million in 2020. Profits per equity partner were $1.601 million, an increase of 18.9% when compared with $1.346 million the year before, even with 1.9% more equity partners.

The 2021 financials compare favorably to 2020, when revenue declined by 1.7%, but profits improved by 10.1%. Due to the firm's fiscal year, which runs from April through March, 2020 captured a full year of impact from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The firm's total lawyer head count was 803 on a full-time-equivalent basis in 2021, a drop of 4.6% when compared with 842 in 2020. The firm had 183 equity partners on an FTE basis, up 1.9% from 179 the year before, and 152 non-equity partners on an FTE basis, down 12.9% from 175 the prior year.

The financials result from "high levels of activity across the board," Martinez said, specifically in practices including privacy and cybersecurity, capital markets, structured finance, real estate development and finance, and infrastructure.

M&A picked up in 2021, compared with 2020, Martinez said, with investors and companies putting capital to work by buying and selling things.

Litigation also got busier as the year went on—the firm's fiscal year ended on March 31—in areas including antitrust, intellectual property and trade secrets, he said.

The firm's energy industry team grew significantly in 2018, when Virginia-founded Hunton & Williams merged with Texas-founded Andrews Kurth Kenyon. Work for the energy industry, which touched many of the busy practices, was strong in 2021, Martinez said.

"Part of our strategy has been to make sure we can effectively cover what we call the four pillars—power, oil and gas, renewables and nuclear," he said.

Among transactions, the firm represented Industrial Logistics Properties Trust in its $4 billion  acquisition of Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corp.; advised Sunlight Financial in its $1.3 billion merger with Spartan Acquisition Corp. II; and represented Houston's Axiom Space in connection with a long-term ground lease agreement at the Houston Spaceport, in connection with a plan to create the world's first commercial space station.

In litigation matters, IP and litigation lawyers landed an amicable resolution for non-profit, amateur co-ed roller derby team the Cleveland Guardians in a trademark infringement suit against the Major League Baseball team formerly known as the Cleveland Indians, which itself adopted the Guardians moniker in 2020. Lawyers also won a default judgment for plaintiff Calsep, a Danish software provider for oil and gas companies, in a $10 million trade secrets theft lawsuit, including securing death penalty sanctions against the defendant, which then had its pleadings struck.

Expenses were higher in 2021 than the prior year, but Martinez said the firm "managed to contain them as much as we could." As the year went on, travel expenses increased, as did associate compensation costs, he said.

The firm prepaid a "fair amount" of expenses before year-end, like it did in prior years.

"What we do is create a pool of cash to deploy on insurance premiums, rent, subscriptions to online services. These are expenses that will come due, but we prepaid at the end of March," he said.

The large decline in the number of non-equity partners—23 attorneys in total—is largely related to retirements, he said. He said there were a number of retirements in 2021, and those came out of the non-equity ranks, because equity partners generally move to non-equity status in their mid-60s while still practicing.

As for the 4.6% decline in total head count, Martinez said the active hiring market had an effect.

"Just about every firm is a target now. There was unbelievable movement, especially among the transactional associate ranks," he said.

For this year, Martinez said Hunton Andrews has no plans to launch any new offices, but the firm has ongoing talks with several lateral hire candidates in practices that provide good growth opportunities for the firm.

The firm has international offices in Bangkok, Beijing, Brussels, Dubai, London and Toyko, and demand varied across the locations, he said.

"The lawyers in London were quite busy and parts of Asia were, but other parts were subject to a greater economic uncertainty due to COVID lockdowns. On balance, you had those economies that emerged from COVID first providing more work," he said.

Hunton Andrews  is only a couple weeks into its new fiscal year, but Martinez said the firm is "keeping a watchful eye" on the impact of turbulence on deal activity.

"We are seeing a confluence of factors. You have rising inflation…an already stretched global supply chain, and that is exacerbated with the war in Europe," he said.

"It's interesting times," Martinez said. "You really need that watchful eye, and more than anything else, [to] be responsive to your clients."