Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas has promoted 84 associates to senior or principal associate level, with the majority of these - 58% - being based in the Delhi region, closely followed by Mumbai.

On 1 September, the firm had announced the promotion of 53 new senior associates, 30 new principal associates, and one new principal associate designate.

We had requested further information on the regional and practice area split, which has revealed that the general corporate practice area was the single greatest beneficiary of the associate promotions, at 40% of the totals.

Dispute resolution followed close behind, at 30%, while projects and project finance made up around 11%, and insolvency 8%.

Competition was the single-largest area after that at 4%.

The remaining 7% consisted of aggregated promotions in banking & finance, capital markets, tax and intellectual property (IP).

Regional split

In terms of location, Delhi and Gurgaon - the original head offices of the firm - saw 51% and 6% of associate promos respectively.

Mumbai, its newest but easily second-largest office, got 36%.

However, the firm’s other offices saw only between one to two promotions: two associate promotions in Kolkata and Chennai; and one each in Bangalore and Ahmedabad.

Year-by-year

Last year Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas had promoted only 61 associates (36 to senior associate and 21 to principal associate).

That makes this year’s round nearly 40% larger (with nearly 50% more senior associates) potentially suggesting a slimmer partnership promotion round, if any, this year.

Last year’s partner promotions had happened around October 2019.