Revenues are rising again on K Street after a brutal 2013 for many of Washington’s top firms.
Four of the top five lobby shops on Monday reported increases in lobbying revenue over the first three months of 2014, with some in the top 20 recording double-digit growth.While lobbyists aren’t expecting a boom year, they’re holding out hope that Congress will have a productive summer despite the pressures of the midterm election season.
“You don't have an across-the-board bull market, but you're seeing increased activity where Congress is acting,” said Smith Davis, a partner in the public law and policy practice at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
In the first quarter of 2014, Akin Gump banked $8.6 million in lobbying revenues, an uptick of about 7 percent from the same period last year and the latest in a run of steady gains for the firm that began after a 2012 slump.
“It's not as robust as it will be — because there is a pent up demand, and everybody knows it — but it's not as robust as it once was,” Davis said.
Congress has a number of big-ticket legislative items on the agenda for 2014, including the “doc fix” for Medicare, tax extenders and the reauthorization of a transportation bill. So even if campaign politics gum up the works in the run-up to the election, lobby firms are expecting a flurry of activity in the lame-duck session.
"It’s a lot of getting everything prepared so when you come back and you only have a month to wrap all this stuff up … the pieces of the package are all there,” said H. Stewart Van Scoyoc, president and chief executive of Van Scoyoc Associates. “Most of what happens at that point in time happens in very small rooms with very few people.”
Van Scoyoc’s firm made more than $4.8 million in lobbying fees in 2014’s first quarter, a small jump over the $4.7 million it made during the first three months of 2013.
Still, growth of any kind — no matter how small — is exciting prospect for lobby firms after a multi-year slump that saw many corporate clients cut back their influence budgets.
One big winner in the first quarter was Capitol Counsel, which again pumped up its profits, seeing revenues jump 24 percent in the first quarter of 2013 to $4.1 million. That continues a streak of explosive growth that has transformed Capitol Counsel into one of Washington’s top-earning firms.
Patton Boggs, which has long been king of the earnings game, retained its spot as the No. 1 K Street firm, but saw its lobbying revenues fall about 9 percent amid a large restructuring at the firm and several departures.
The firm banked $10.3 million in the first three months of 2013, but brought in $9.4 million in the same stretch this year.
Kevin O’Neill, the deputy chairman of the public policy department at Patton Boggs, said that the firm is making up revenues that were lost due to staff departures. He also said their per-lobbyist earnings are actually up 8 percent.
“From a business development perspective, we had the best quarter — demand-wise — than the last couple years,” he said. “[It] shows that our aggressive strategy of focusing on core areas of growth has really started to pay off.”
He said Patton has seen a jump in foreign lobbying work, which is not included in the lobbying revenue figures tallied by The Hill.
Read the full story:www.thehill.com
Follow Larry Elder on Twitter
"LIke" Larry Elder on Facebook
