Bird & Bird has made its largest-ever partner promotions round, appointing 23 lawyers to partner during the year.

Today (May 1), the firm announced it has promoted 20 partners, after it made up a trio in November last year.

It is a significant increase on last year's round, when nine partners were promoted during the year.

Eleven of this year's new partners are women, three of which are in the U.K. Lucy England and Alison Dixon have been made up in the firm's commercial and employment practices respectively, alongside Russia desk head Anna Shashina.

Commercial lawyer Robert Turner completes the new U.K. partner quartet.

The majority of the firm's new partners are spread across its European offices. Eight of those are in Germany, three are in Italy, and one in Madrid.

In 2018, eight of the new partners were based across the firm's central Europe offices and one was made up in the U.K.

Bird & Bird CEO David Kerr said in a statement: "Bird & Bird is strongly committed to eliminating the gender gap within the partnership, and the promotion of 11 of our most talented female lawyers is an important milestone in achieving that goal."

The firm has also promoted five lawyers to senior counsel and 16 to counsel in the new round.

Bird & Bird 2019 partner promotions in full:

  • James Durnall – corporate, Australia
  • Hank Leung – IP, China
  • Julie Bak-Larsen – commercial, Denmark
  • Morten Nissen – competition and EU, Denmark (November 2018)
  • Teea Kemppinen – employment, Finland
  • Stefanie Orttmann – corporate, Germany
  • Stephan Kübler – corporate, Germany
  • Philipp Egler – dispute resolution, Germany
  • Catharina Klumpp – employment, Germany
  • Claus Becker – IP, Germany
  • Sebastian Höpfner – IP, Germany
  • Lars Kyrberg – commercial, Germany
  • Mascha Grundmann – IP, Germany
  • László Nanyista – dispute resolution, Hungary (November 2018)
  • Cristiano Pambianchi – employment, Italy
  • Antonella De Gregori – IP, Italy
  • Antonella Ceschi – real estate, Italy
  • Izabela Kowalczuk-Pakuła – data protection, Poland (November 2018)
  • Alexander Benalal – commercial, Spain
  • Robert Turner – commercial, UK
  • Lucy England – commercial, UK
  • Alison Dixon – employment, UK
  • Anna Shashina – Russia desk, UK