Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) has announced a 51-strong 2026 partner promotions class, down on this year’s total of 56, but up on 2024’s class of 49 partners.
The proportion of women promoted rose to 51% (26 of 51) from 35% in the previous cohort, which broke a five-year run of promotions in which women had accounted for more than 40% of the firm’s partner promotions.
It is the first round overseen by Peter Scott and Jeff Cody after their appointments as NRF’s co-global managing partners were confirmed in 2024 as part of a change in its leadership structure following the departure of former global CEO Gerry Pecht.
Cody said growing its partnership continued to be an important focus for NRF, adding the newly-promoted partners “have demonstrated exceptional client focus, technical excellence and a genuine commitment to collaboration across our global platform”.
The promotions follow 3,000-lawyer NRF growing global revenue to $2.4bn in 2024, while profits per equity partner rose to $1.6m, according to data published by Law.com.
While the global span of this year’s promotions was slightly larger than last year – covering 22 of the firm’s 53 offices – North America was once again the clear winner, with 30 new partners promoted, 18 of them in the US and 12 in Canada.
Some 10 partners were promoted in London, in line with the previous round’s 11 and the second-highest tally of London promotions since the Covid-19 pandemic. Four were in the firm’s banking and finance practice, where Georgie Field, Jonathan Crookes, Matthew Bambury and Olivia Cullen made the grade.
Meanwhile, six lawyers were promoted in Australia, while two were promoted in Europe across Munich and Paris, where earlier this year the firm hired a six-lawyer projects team from Eversheds.
There were also two promotions in South Africa, where NRF is set to split with its 120-lawyer practice next year in a move that means it will no longer have an on-the-ground presence in the country. The final promotion went to M&A lawyer Shazi Askarpour in Dubai.
This year’s class spans 12 practice areas across the firm, including 14 in litigation and disputes, 13 in corporate, M&A and securities and eight in banking and finance. There were also four promotions in the IP practice, with the remainder spread between antitrust and competition, cybersecurity and data privacy, projects and government (two each), and one apiece in employment and labour, financial services and regulation, healthcare transactions and risk advisory.
The full list of the promotions:
Antitrust and competition
Alex Cummings, Houston
Nuala Canavan, London
Banking and finance
Adele Gray, Melbourne
CJ Grey, Cape Town*
Georgie Field, London
Jonathan Crookes, London
Matthew Bambury, London
Michael Cockburn, Toronto
Olivia Cullen, London
Ryan Apar, New York
Corporate, M&A and securities
Caleb Segrest, Dallas
Charles St-Pierre, Montréal
David Bartlett, London
Fridoun Chee, Sydney
Joseph Palmieri, Toronto
Joshua Temkin, London
Julia Godolphin, Montréal
Matthew O’Shea, London
Pierre-Olivier Valiquette, Montréal
Shazi Askarpour, Dubai
Siyuan An, Los Angeles
Will Betts, Dallas
Wenzel Richter, Munich
Cybersecurity and data privacy
Ellen Blanchard, Dallas
Susana Medeiros, New York
Employment and labour
Francis Champagne, Montréal
Financial services and regulation
Rachael Hashmall, Denver
Government
Jiadi Liang, Canberra
Veronica Seeto, Canberra
Healthcare transactions
Maxwell Karasek, Chicago
Intellectual property
Daniel Posker, Sydney
John Poulos, Chicago
Paul Jorgensen, Toronto
Stephanie Schmidt, Austin
Litigation and disputes
Chris Cooke, San Antonio
Ellie Norris, Dallas
Emily Wolf, Austin
Ieronymos Bikakis, London
Jaime Wing, Minneapolis
Jessica Warwick, Ottawa
Joseph Bentley, London
Julie Lacourcière, Montréal
Kiasha Nagiah, Johannesburg*
Kristina Williams, Dallas
Lindsay Bec, Calgary
Meghan Fougere, Ottawa
Rita Nader-Guéroult, Paris
Terresa Feng, Montréal
Projects
Gabrielle Jacques, New York
Jeremy Tripp, Houston
Risk advisory
Jeremy Moller, Sydney
*Norton Rose Fulbright South Africa will become an independent firm as of March 31, 2026.
Email your news and story ideas to: [email protected]
