Baker McKenzie used its annual summer promotions round to bring up 52 new partners across its international offices. With the 23 North America partners promoted in January, the summer round brings Baker McKenzie’s total 2022 partner promotions to 75, an increase from its 67 promotions in 2021, but still not equal to its 84 promotions in 2020.
Baker continues to make progress in the 40:40:20 gender diversity partner targets that it announced in 2019, where the goal is 40% women, 40% men, and 20% flexible (women, men, or non-binary persons). Women made up 37% of the 2022 partner cohort, up from the 36% figure of 2021.
Promotions came throughout the firm’s 25 jurisdictions outside North America and were largely focused on M&A, tax, and dispute resolution. Just over half the new partners (27) came in the Asia-Pacific region, with eight in Bangkok alone. European promotions included three in London and 17 on the continent. Filling out the cohort were three new partners in Dubai, one in Cairo, and one in Casablanca.
The North America promotion round in January was dominated by Toronto, with four new partners, plus three each in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Dallas. Eight more promotions came across U.S. cities, and two made partner in Mexico City.
The summer international promotions were spread fairly evenly across several firm practice areas, including M&A, banking and finance, dispute resolution, intellectual property (IP) tech, tax, and capital markets. The North America practice areas that saw the most new partners included tax, dispute resolution, and M&A.
In addition to its partner promotions, Baker has made 41 lateral partner hires since June 2021. One of those was former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who is now the Global Chair of Baker McKenzie’s global cybersecurity practice. Baker also continued to expand its cybersecurity and data privacy practices by hiring two new partners in July: Liz Roper in New York and Cynthia Cole in Palo Alto.
