Three candidates remain in the race for the DLA Piper International senior partner job after the first round of voting closed on Friday (26 January).

The three left in the race are corporate head Bob Bishop, managing director for developing markets Andrew Darwin, and London corporate partner and board member Jon Hayes. All are based in the UK.

Five unsuccessful candidates have been eliminated from the race after the first round of voting, which ran from Wednesday (24 January) to Friday last week.

Those eliminated are Brussels competition lawyer and board member Bertold Baer-Bouyssiere; Paris employment partner Bijan Eghbal; Madrid corporate partner Inigo Gomez-Jordana; London finance partner Charles Morrison; and London intellectual property head Bonella Ramsay.

Bishop, Darwin and Hayes had long been identified by partners as the  overwhelming favourites in the race to succeed former senior partner Juan Picon, who resigned to join Latham & Watkins in November.

There will now be a period of hustings, with the second stage of voting to be held on 7-9 February.

The voting will use the single transferable vote model, with partners ranking candidates in order of preference. The candidate with the least votes will be eliminated and their votes then allocated to the remaining candidates.

The successful candidate will be confirmed as senior partner of the firm's non-US business on 12 February.

The winning partner will be senior partner of DLA's non-US business, and is also likely to be appointed global co-chair alongside co-CEO Simon Levine and the firm's US management co-chair Roger Meltzer and co-CEO Cameron Jay Rains.

Levine's term as co-CEO is set to conclude at the end of 2018, which could lead to another contested election this year if a challenger emerges.