Sidley Austin has promoted 38 lawyers to partner and 27 to counsel in its latest promotions round, its largest combined round to date. 

The partner promotions achieved gender parity, in line with last year's 29-strong cohort, which saw 14 women promoted, and an increase on the previous two years when women made up 40% and 43% of the cohorts.

As with previous years US promotions dominated, with more than 90% of the partner cohort working across the firm’s domestic network and the remainder based in London. The lawyers will assume their new roles at the start of next year.

The firm’s global finance and real estate teams saw the most promotions, with four each, followed by M&A, commercial litigation and disputes, and energy and infrastructure, each of which received three. Practices with two promotions included insurance, product liability and mass torts, investment funds and restructuring, with the remainder spread across 12 practice areas including private equity, ECVC and capital markets. 

The firm's Chicago headquarters saw the most promotions (12), followed by New York (seven) and Washington DC (six). There were also four promotions in Houston, two in Century City and one apiece in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas and Boston, where the firm saw a team led by former private equity co-head Alexander Temel decamp to Paul Weiss earlier this year to open an office. 

The firm also boosted its California partnership in August with the hire of M&A and ECVC partner Jon Olsen from Goodwin Procter, who joined to open an office for the firm in San Diego with a team of existing Sidley lawyers. 

The firm's only partner promotions outside of the US went to London trio Chris Boyle (food, drug and medical device), Christopher Lock (global arbitration, trade and advocacy) and Christopher Lock (restructuring). Lock's promotion follows the co-heads of Sidley's London restructuring group, Jifree Cader and Mark Knight, defecting to Davis Polk last month to launch its European restructuring practice. 

Sidley's 160-lawyer London office, which grew revenue by just over 12% to $209.7m in the 2023 financial year, has also been bolstered this year by eight partner hires from Latham & Watkins, including most recently Tania Bedi, a co-chair of Latham's London finance department. Earlier in the year, the firm also recruited a five-partner leveraged finance team from Latham led by Jayanthi Sadanandan and Sam Hamilton and debt capital markets duo Scott Colwell and Patrick Kwak. 

“This combined group of 65 lawyers is the largest class we’ve elected and promoted in Sidley’s nearly 160-year history,” said Yvette Ostolaza, chair of Sidley’s management committee. “We are proud to recognise this group of world-class Sidley lawyers with exceptional business acumen ready to lead in the boardroom, courtroom and in their communities. We are grateful to our clients who make these promotions possible.” 

Sidley pulled in revenue of $3.1bn in 2023, up 6.1% on the year before and putting it sixth on the Am Law in the Am Law 200. Meantime profit per equity partner rose 10.3% to $4.59m.