Global giant Linklaters has failed to hit its gender diversity target in the latest annual partnership round, with women comprising five (19%) of 26 new appointments announced today. 

Seven out of ten of the new appointees are based outside the UK, across ten practice areas and 13 jurisdictions.

Linklaters was one of the first magic circle firms to adopt gender diversity targets in 2014, pledging that at least 30% of new partner appointments would be women. That year 43% of new partners were female.

Senior partner Charlie Jacobs said this afternoon: 'The exceptional quality of today’s newly elected partners reflects our commitment to attracting, retaining and promoting the most talented lawyers in jurisdictions and practices around the world. As excited as we are by today’s announcement, we are disappointed that we have failed to reach our target for female partners in this year’s election.

'We remain absolutely committed to this important goal and acknowledge that despite firm-wide progress on diversity, we must and will strive to do better.’

The promotions take effect on 1 May, keeping the total partnership number stable at 470. 

The new partners in London are: Fionnghuala Griggs, Mainstream Corporate; Ian Callaghan, Banking; James Morgan, Tax; Ilia Ditiatev, Projects; Kanyaka Ramamurthi, Mainstream Corporate; Mavnick Nerwal, Tax; Reza Taylor, Capital Markets; and Yohan Liyanage, TMT IP.

Newly appointed outside the UK are:

Alexander Harmse, Capital Markets, Amsterdam

Andreas Dehio, Financial Regulation Group, Frankfurt

Andrew Jennens, Banking, Abu Dhabi

Burkhard Rinne, Capital Markets, Frankfurt

Christian Schmitt, Dispute Resolution, Frankfurt

Dirk Horcher, Mainstream Corporate, Munich

Iris Leung, Capital Markets, Hong Kong

Janusz Dzianachowski, Real Estate, Warsaw

Jean-Charles Jais, Dispute Resolution, Paris

John Xu, Mainstream Corporate, Shanghai

Laure de Panafieu, Employment and Incentives, Singapore

Laurent Victor-Michel, Mainstream Corporate, Paris

Melinda Perera, Banking, Luxembourg

Parthiv Rishi, Mainstream Corporate, Singapore

Pierre Thomet, Mainstream Corporate, Paris

Robert Trust, Banking, New York

Rui Camacho Palma, Tax, Lisbon

Sumit Indwar, Financial Regulation Group, Hong Kong.