Atlanta law firms promoted more lawyers to partner this year, continuing an upward trend, while women made up a significantly higher percentage of the new partner class in the city.

Women made up 45% of the city's partner promotions—a major jump from 31% last year—for the 82 promotions that the Daily Report tracked this year at 29 Atlanta firms.

Most of the promotions tracked for this report were at big national and regional firms, such as King & Spalding, Alston & Bird, Seyfarth Shaw and Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, but the list includes local plaintiffs and defense boutiques, such as, respectively, Fried Rogers Goldberg and Weathington McGrew.

Several of Atlanta's largest firms markedly increased the number of women they promoted to partner this year. Of Alston & Bird's nine new Atlanta partners, for instance, six were women. (Last year Alston promoted only three women out of eight new Atlanta partners.)

King & Spalding promoted 13 lawyers in Atlanta—and five were women. That's up from zero women last year of the firm's seven Atlanta partner promotions.

That sharply pushed up the overall percentage of women, because the eight largest Atlanta-based firms accounted for almost half (45%) of the 82 Atlanta promotions: King & Spalding, Alston & Bird, Troutman Sanders, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, Eversheds Sutherland, Smith Gambrell & Russell, Morris Manning & Martin and Arnall Golden Gregory.

Other firms with large Atlanta offices also promoted more women. At Seyfarth Shaw and Carlock Copeland & Stair, for instance, three of each firm's five newly promoted partners were women.

Consistent with the steady growth in revenue and profit at Atlanta's largest firms, they continued to increase the size of their new partner classes. The same group of eight large Atlanta-based firms collectively increased their new partner classes by 10%, for a total of 95 new partners nationally. Of those, 45% were in Atlanta.

As in past years, the new Atlanta partners are mostly graduates of Southern law schools, making up 77% of the total. The top schools for this year's class were the University of Georgia (13), Georgia State University (12), Mercer University (7), the University of Virginia (5) and Emory University (4).

Asian-Pacific Americans

The Daily Report did not track promotions by race or ethnicity, but Asian-Pacific Americans gained critical mass, accounting for six new partners and making up 7% of the total new partner class.

All were male: Suneel Gupta of Baker Donelson, Dennis Hom of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, Daniel Huynh of Morris Manning & Martin, Robert Lee of Troutman Sanders, Naveen Ramachandrappa of Bondurant Mixson & Elmore and Patrick Ryan of FordHarrison.

Ramachandrappa, who grew up in the small North Georgia town of Armuchee, said participating in debate competition was a big factor in getting to Bondurant, one of Atlanta's top firms, where he made partner in eight years.

He got into debate in high school after attending a debate camp at Emory on a scholarship. Melissa Wade, who ran the Emory debate program until her retirement in 2015, made that possible, Ramachandrappa said.

That led to the debate team at the University of Georgia and then law school at UGA Law. Ramachandrappa said that he'd never heard of Bondurant, but a fellow debater, Kamal Ghali, had done a summer clerkship with the firm and suggested he interview there. (Ghali recently returned to the firm after six years at the Atlanta U.S. Attorney's Office.)

Ramachandrappa's first assignment during his own summer clerkship at Bondurant was from another debater, appellate partner Frank Lowry, helping to brief an appeal before the Georgia Supreme Court. He joined the firm in 2010 after a clerkship with Judge Thomas Thrash of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

“The critical stuff happened before I got here,” Ramachandrappa said. “Joining the debate team, learning and growing there, and working with Judge Thrash. So by the time I got to the firm, I had a lot of important training I needed.”

At Bondurant he's developed an appellate practice, mostly on the plaintiff's side, but with some defense appeals. Ramachandrappa also has started helping plaintiffs lawyers with cases at the trial level, handling things such as jury charges and motions in limine, so the other lawyers can focus on presenting the case to the jury.

In November, he assisted Andy Rogers and Michael D'Antignac of Deitch & Rogers in winning a $13.8 million verdict for their client, the mother of a baby who starved to death, against the Norcross hotel where she and the baby had been imprisoned by a cult leader (now serving a life sentence).

Ramachandrappa, who is single, said he works a lot of hours, which probably helped him make partner. “But time is not the total measure of commitment,” he said, adding that he tends to focus intensely on whatever he enjoys, whether it's work or following “Game of Thrones” recaps (from the live Twitter recap to a column, then a podcast—and then a precap of the next show).

Even though that's his personality, Ramachandrappa said, “That's not my expectation for the ideal workplace for everybody. We want people with different lifestyles.”