As reported by Law.com, Kirkland & Ellis has made the decision not to publicly announce its newly promoted Partner class. The firm has historically issued a press release in early October revealing the new Partners, but this year marks a shift in strategy.

Nonetheless, using publicly-available data tracked by Pirical, we can reveal the details of the Kirkland & Ellis Partner promotions that we've mapped in October 2025.

Bloomberg Law stated that this year's promotion round topped the previous high in 2023, according to two people familiar with the matter who didn’t provide the exact number.

However with Pirical data, we can reveal that the number is at least 228 Partner promotions. This means Kirkland has significantly surpassed last year's promotions (200) and the previous record (205).

All of the firm's US offices, except the newly opened Philadelphia office, saw a number of promotions.

The offices with the largest number of promoted Associates were Chicago (58), New York City (45), and Houston (20). While the cities that saw the largest Partner headcount growth relative to their size, were Salt Lake City (+31%), Miami (+29%), and the Bay Area (+23%).

The remaining 12% of promotions were in Kirkland's international offices. London, which is now the firm's 3rd largest office worldwide, had the most promotions (20). The rest were in the Hong Kong (3), Munich (2), Beijing (1), and Paris (1) offices.

Unsurprisingly, M&A attorneys (43) lead the way among this year's promotion class.

Litigation (33), Investment Funds (26), and Corporate (26) follow suit as the next most common practices for the newly promoted Partners.

Source: publicly-available data tracked by Pirical Legal Professionals (PLP)

Timeframe: promotions from October 2025

Data is derived from tracked Partner promotions, numbers may be slightly incomplete due to limited public information.

Updated 31 Oct 2025: added additional mapped promotions.

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