Kirkland & Ellis, which tops the Am Law 100 list of the world’s largest law firms by revenue, has promoted 200 to partnership, a slight decline on last year’s record-breaking round of 205.

The 2024 cohort is still higher than the previously record-breaking rounds in 2022 (193) and 2021 (151). In line with previous years, more than 80% of the promoted partners are based in the US, with 44 in New York, 26 in its Chicago headquarters, 19 in Houston, 18 in Los Angeles, 17 in Washington DC and the rest spread across its offices in Austin, the Bay Area, Boston, Dallas, Miami and Salt Lake City.

Outside of the US, London saw the most promotions with 25, with six in Hong Kong, three in Munich and one each in Paris and Riyadh, having opened in Saudi Arabia last October as headquarters of its Middle East business. The promotions are effective from today (1 October).

In London, the investment funds practice saw the most promotions with eight, including Gabrielle Chiu, Alexander Clarke and Oliver Cutbill. M&A and private equity saw five, while capital markets saw three, with the rest spread across tax; government, regulatory and internal investigations; financial services regulatory; debt finance; antitrust and competition; restructuring; and technology and IP transactions.

Globally, more than a quarter of the promotions were in its M&A and private equity practice (51), followed by 36 in its investment funds practice and 27 in litigation.

Kirkland was ranked fourth in Refinitiv’s M&A advisory league table by deal value in the first half of the year, having topped the table in 2023. It worked on $197.7bn worth of deals in the opening six months, compared to $399.4bn of deals in the whole of 2023.

The M&A team has been prominent on some of the year’s biggest oil and gas deals, including EQT’s $35bn deal for Equitrans Midstream and ConocoPhillips’ $22.5bn acquisition of Marathon Oil. The firm also opened in Frankfurt earlier this year with the lateral hire of M&A heavyweight Tobias Larisch from Latham & Watkins.

In July, the Chicago firm said it was introducing a new policy that would enable it to hold back deferred pay of partners who defect to rival firms. It lost partners to Freshfields and Paul Weiss earlier this year in New York and London.

Meantime, profit per equity partner rose nearly 6% to $7.96m in the 2023 financial year as revenue topped $7bn.