Atlanta law firms continued to promote relatively large numbers of new partners this year, but the percentage of women making partner declined, reversing some of last year's gains.

Women made up 41% of partner promotions this year, down from 45% last year, for the 101 promotions tracked by the Daily Report at 34 firms. That was still a big increase from 2018 when only 31% of Atlanta's new partners were women.

The 101 promotions were up from 82 new partners at 29 firms last year. 

This year eight firms—a mix of Atlanta-based and national ones–promoted five or more local lawyers to partner, accounting for almost half—48%—of the promotions. For those eight, the Atlanta rate of women promoted, at 46%, was slightly higher than the overall rate of 41% for women.

Alston & Bird and Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough led the pack with eight Atlanta promotions each. (Alston promoted two women and six men locally, while Nelson Mullins promoted three women and five men, although nationally its record class of 29 new partners was almost evenly divided.)

Three of those eight firms promoted more women than men locally: three women and two men apiece at Atlanta's Morris Manning & Martin and Swift Currie McGhee & Hiers, while Seyfarth Shaw promoted four women and two men locally. 

Atlanta-based litigation defense firm Copeland Stair Kingma & Lovell's class of six new partners was evenly divided between women and men while two other Atlanta-based firms, Arnall Golden Gregory and Taylor English Duma, each promoted three men and two women. 

Litigator-Heavy Classes

Of the 101 new partners, 41 were litigators—by far the most common practice area for the group—followed by corporate, with 18 lawyers, and real estate, with 17. Those three areas accounted for 75% of the promotions.

There were some gender differences by practice area for the new partners. For intellectual property lawyers, men made up a full 73% of the 11 promotions, and two-thirds of the litigators were men. Of corporate attorneys, 61% were men.

But women were the majority in other practices. Even though they represented only 41% of total promotions, women made up 53% of new real estate partners. Women also had an edge in labor and employment, making up 60% of the five new partners. In health law, three of the four new partners were women.

As in past years, the new Atlanta partners were mostly graduates of Southern law schools, making up 79% percent of the total. The top schools for this year's class were the University of Georgia (20), Georgia State University (18), Emory University (17), Mercer University (9) and Vanderbilt University (3).

Infographics design by Roberto Jiménez

Embracing Innovation, Risk

One of Morris Manning's five new Atlanta partners, Bess Hinson, said making partner meant embracing innovation and being open to risk as she developed her cybersecurity and data privacy compliance practice. Morris Manning recruited her from Nelson Mullins in 2017 to head that practice.

"I made some transitions and took some risks. They paid off," said Hinson, 36, now an equity partner, as Morris Manning does not have a two-tiered partnership track. Morris Manning promoted a record class of eight partners in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., this year, including five women, increasing the 200-lawyer firm's partnership ranks by 10% for a total of 90.

"It feels like a decade ago now," Hinson said of becoming a partner in January. She added that the COVID-19 pandemic is creating new privacy issues as companies determine what employee data, such as temperatures or infection status, are permissible to collect. "And there's more risk of cyberattacks, since everyone is working remotely," she said. 

Intrigued in college by the uncharted territory of companies collecting consumer data from social media, Hinson has pursued a cybersecurity and privacy compliance practice since earning a J.D. from the University of Michigan in 2011. 

"Facebook was created while I was an undergraduate at Yale, so I was a witness to this new social media technology that rapidly expanded," Hinson said. "The ways companies collected that data would either lead to data breaches or an increased need for counsel—in compliance as well as liability." 

"It was an area that captured my imagination," she said, noting that many of the regulatory laws had not yet been written. Lawyers need to embrace innovation, she added. "Many get into the routine, on a pretty hierarchical path, and they can get stifled."

After a federal appellate clerkship, Hinson started at King & Spalding in 2013 working on data breach litigation and class action defense. She moved to Nelson Mullins in 2015 to expand her practice's scope into compliance.

"Compliance can be a tough sell," she noted. "It's great if a company does not get into trouble, but it can be hard to quantify the benefits." 

As she started developing her own clients, Hinson wanted to develop her practice "on my own terms." That prompted her to start the Atlanta Women in Cybersecurity Roundtable in 2017 for women lawyers and corporate tech officers. "It's a high-risk issue where everyone is grasping for knowledge and expertise," she said, and experienced leaders are still scarce. The group, which meets every quarter, has grown from 45 participants to about 80.

"It gave new meaning to my law practice as a way to meet other women professionals in this area, learn from their expertise and very organically network with clients," she said. "That gave me motivation to serve as a firm leader." 

In her quest to make partner, Hinson added, "I took a really hard look at the options for a woman as an equity partner in deciding where to practice law." 

Morris Manning's entrepreneurial culture and concentration of emerging tech clients fit with Hinson's desire to advise companies "every step of the way" on compliance needs, she said. "I'm looking at data protection addendums and privacy policies every day, while also working on some data breaches," she said. "It's what I do with 100 percent of my time. That's unusual."

For other aspiring partners, Hinson advises, "Have a unique practice where you are able to build a book because you're sought out for your subject-matter expertise. It's really made a difference in my career as a business generator."