Pinsent Masons has elevated 19 of its staff to partnership in its latest promotion round, two more than in 2020.

The 19 include Matthew Kay, head of the firm’s professional services group Vario, only the third partnership promotion to be made outside of traditional legal services following the promotions of Hayley Boxall and David Halliwell last year. The other 18 include lawyers in the firm’s energy, financial services, infrastructure, real estate and technology, science and industry practices.

Richard Foley, senior partner at Pinsent Masons, said: “This year more than any other, our people have experienced enormous disruption to their personal and professional lives. Despite everything, they have shown resilience and the ability to adapt and thrive. Although operating under challenging circumstances, our newly appointed partners have continued to apply Pinsent Masons’ values, innovative thinking and solutions-based legal services to achieve the best results for our clients.”

The majority of the promotions are in the UK, with 13, followed by two in China and one each in the UAE, Qatar, Ireland and Hong Kong, roughly in line with last year when 13 were promoted in the UK, with two in Australia and one each in Germany and Hong Kong.

While the proportion of partner promotions that were women fell to 26% this year from 46% in 2020, the total number of women at partnership level across the firm has now nudged up to 28.5% from 28%.

The UK promotions included four exclusively in financial services – Jane Boyd, Jonathan Cavill, Katie Ivens and Andrew Robertson – alongside Jake Landman, who works across financial services, energy, technology, science and industry, and Carl Scott, who works across both financial services and real estate. Other UK promotions included energy lawyers Jeremy Chang and Ronan Lambe, technology, science and industry lawyers Stuart Davey and James Kaye, and energy and infrastructure lawyer Arwyn Jones.

The two China promotions include energy and infrastructure lawyers Richard Feller and FeiFei Zheng, with infrastructure and energy specialist Pamela McDonald promoted in Qatar, energy lawyer Oisin McLoughlin in Ireland and infrastructure lawyers Mohammed Talib in Hong Kong and Faisal Attia in the UAE.

The cohort will begin their partnerships at the start of May. Last week, Pinsent was named the top UK law firm in the regional Thomson Reuters Law Firm Brand Index. Slaughter and May, meanwhile, named five new partners.