DLA Piper has become the latest law firm to unveil a trimmed down promotion round, welcoming 63 new partners this time.  

The latest round follows bumper crops of more than 70 lawyers in 2023 and 2022, though it is still markedly larger than the 44-strong cohort in 2021.  

Twenty of the promotions this time round went to women – 32% of the total, which brings the firm closer to its goal to have a 30% female partnership by 2025.  

The firm set that goal in 2021 when women made up 21% of its partnership, a proportion that has since grown to 27% according to data from Pirical. The firm also set the goal to increase that to 40% by 2030 and, effective immediately, that half of all internal partner promotions should go to lawyers from underrepresented groups.  

The promotions are spread across all the firm’s practice areas, spanning 37 offices in 18 countries.

The previous two rounds have been dominated by the firm’s 1,900-lawyer corporate team but this time litigation had the largest intake of new partners, with 16, followed by corporate with 13, 11 in finance, projects and restructuring and 10 in intellectual property and technology. Employment and real estate had four promotions each, while tax and regulatory and government affairs had two each. The final promotion went to Sydney-based lawyer Catriona Martin in the firm’s pro bono team.  

Regionally, the US has the highest number of promotions with 20 new partners, followed by Continental Europe with 17 and Asia and the Middle East with two each. There were 10 promotions in the UK, including five in London, where Robin Jack, Oliver Saunders and Leanne Rogers moved up in the litigation and regulatory team alongside Michael Graham in the tax team and Hannah Watson Fanin in the corporate practice. 

Their promotions follow the firm adding a trio of energy partners in London last month from Paul Hastings and Brown Rudnick, around the same time it signed up the head of Pinsent Masons’ London office, senior investigations lawyer Andrew Sackey. 

Elsewhere in the UK there were two promotions in Manchester and one each in Edinburgh, Sheffield and Leeds, while the rest of the promotions were split between Canada (seven), New Zealand (three) and Australia (two).  

Simon Levine, international managing partner and global co-CEO, commented: “This year’s promotions come at a time of exciting innovation in the legal sector on priority topics like ESG and AI. By acting as trusted business partners to our clients and by living our firm’s values of being supportive, collaborative, bold and exceptional, this cohort has contributed significantly to the success of our firm. I congratulate them all.”

The promotions are effective as of 1 April in the United States and Canada, and 1 May for EMEA and Asia Pacific.

A full list of the partner promotions can be found here.