Reed Smith LLP

A Pittsburgh firm with ties to the city’s industrial kingpins, Reed Smith LLP joined the crowd in globalizing its practice via international mergers in the 21st century. With litigation at the forefront, the firm’s practice strengths include cross-border transactional and regulatory work.

Steel City Origins

Reed Smith’s rise to prominence can be at least partly credited to a symbiotic relationship with an American industrial tycoon. Attorney James Reed, who founded the firm with Philander Knox in 1877, cultivated strong relationships with the one man most responsible for giving the Steel City its blue-collar identity: Andrew Carnegie. In addition to leading the firm’s representation of Carnegie at the peak of his empire-building, Reed served as a charter director of Carnegie’s U.S. Steel. Other industry titans followed Carnegie’s lead in enlisting the burgeoning outfit, and names such as Mellon, Heinz, and Frick soon graced the firm’s client roster.

Edwin W. Smith and other partners joined the firm in the 1880s, and in 1922, the firm adopted the name Reed Smith Shaw & McClay. In recent years, a series of strategic mergers has resulted in the firm known today as Reed Smith, which currently employs nearly 1,700 attorneys worldwide.

Making Its Mark

Known for its litigation prowess, Reed Smith is a full-service shop, advising corporate and commercial clients on litigation, transactional, regulatory, and other matters. It also fields multidisciplinary groups dedicated to clients in the life science, healthcare, media and entertainment, energy and natural resource, transportation, and financial service sectors. The firm reports that it represents more than one-half of the world’s 100 largest companies, including top oil and gas companies, auto manufacturers, commercial and savings banks, and pharmaceutical distributors.

Through Reed Smith’s leading Insurance Recovery practice, attorneys act on behalf of policyholders experiencing catastrophic property losses and product claims and those facing securities litigation and cyber losses. The firm also reviews clients’ insurance policies to help them negotiate data privacy and security liability insurance policies.

The firm has a standout Labor and Employment practice that handles issues from discrimination, executive compensation, labor law, pensions, and wages and hours to unfair competition. The firm also works together with clients to develop global HR strategies and to execute global investigations.

Reed Smith’s Life Sciences and Healthcare practices are also highly regarded. Handling litigation, regulatory, and transactional matters, the firm attorneys are experienced in health insurance, pharmaceutical, medical device, biotechnology, diagnostic, and other matters.

Reed Smith lawyers also work in the entertainment and media space, advising clients in the advertising and marketing, film and television, music, sports, technology, telecom, internet, social media, video gaming, and interactivity industries.

The firm’s international arbitration capabilities have grown over the past several years and now form the cornerstone of Reed Smith’s overall disputes expertise.

School’s (Not) Out

Reed Smith is committed to preparing its people for success. The firm has been providing formal training for career development since 2004. In 2022, the firm restructured, expanded, and rebranded its global competency-based career development program. The new program focuses on core competencies in legal and business skills, client interactions, and citizenship. New offerings include Reed Smith Associate Advantage, a program designed for lawyers in their first three years of practice, and Reed Smith Campus, a global learning management system.

• Reed Smith helped achieved a complete defense win in 2022 involving three of the U.S.’s largest wholesale distributors of prescription drugs.
• Reed Smith obtained a groundbreaking summary judgment for plaintiff Realtek that clarified RAND obligations for standards-essential patents. This decision has had far-reaching impacts for leading tech companies with large patent portfolios.
• Reed Smith secured a unanimous jury verdict on behalf of Wyeth Corp. in a diet drug (Fen-Phen) trial, the first‐ever defense verdict in this type of case.
• Reed Smith earned what is believed to be the largest insurance bad-faith verdict in Pennsylvania history, after a jury awarded Mine Safety Appliances $11 million in compensatory damages and another nearly $47 million in bad-faith damages, including $30 million in punitive damages.

• BTI Client Service A-Team list, recognizing top law firms for superior client service, 20232024—BTI Consulting Group

   

• Legal Technology Trailblazer award for the firm’s Innovation Lab, 2023—National Law Journal

   

• Mansfield Certified Plus for the fifth sixth year running, 20222023—Diversity Lab

   

• 100% on Corporate Equality Index, 20222023—Human Rights Campaign

   

• 100% on Disability Equality Index, 20222023—joint initiative of American Association of People with Disabilities and Disability:IN