Pro Bono / Responsible Business Awards

Award highlights in the U.S.:

• The American Lawyer has named Reed Smith’s Refugee Protection project as the top pro bono project of 2018. Despite many obstacles, this project has been bringing Syrian and Iraqi refugees—who had fled to camps in Jordan and Greece—to permanent safety in other countries. 
• Reed Smith won the 2018 Transatlantic Pro Bono and CSR Initiative of the Year award, presented by Legal Week. This award recognized the firm’s work as lead counsel on the world’s first healthcare development impact bond, designed to fund infant and maternity facilities in India’s Rajasthan state.
• Pittsburgh partner David Fawcett was named by National Law Journal as a 2018 “Litigation Trailblazer”. Dave was one of the top 50 legal professionals profiled by NLJ. His pro bono work winning the release from prison of a man wrongly convicted of arson as a boy where three firefighters were killed, and his litigation compelling Allegheny County to stop putting pregnant women into solitary confinement over minor rules violations, played a large role in this recognition.
• The Los Angeles Bar Association conferred a 2018 Outstanding Public Service Award upon Reed Smith partner David Stanley, citing his years of pro bono cases (over 40) for Central American immigrants living with HIV or AIDS.
• Reed Smith was honored with the 2017 Human Rights Practitioner Award from Heartland Alliance’s National Immigration Justice Center in Chicago. Announcing the award, this well-known global refugee assistance nonprofit explained: “Reed Smith has played a tremendous role in advancing human rights domestically and internationally. Reed Smith successfully challenged illegal delays in the screening of detained individuals seeking protection and applied best practices in refugee protection internationally by sending pro bono attorneys overseas to provide legal advocacy and training.”
• Reed Smith’s Middle East/Greece refugee protection project received a distinguished double honor at the December 2016 Financial Times North America Awards ceremony. Our project leader Jayne Fleming was named one of the top 10 “Legal Innovators of the Year.” Financial Times recognized the project itself as second-best in 2016 in the category of Innovation in Social Responsibility—Projects.
• The American Lawyer honored Reed Smith with its 2016 Grand Prize for Global Citizenship—its highest honor for international pro bono work. This award recognized the firm’s ongoing work on behalf of refugees in Kurdistan and Lebanon and in refugee camps in Jordan and Greece. The most recent work—in Greece--began in May 2016 and grew to include 60 volunteer lawyers and interpreters handling 270 adult refugee cases and 150 cases for unaccompanied minors to date. This team (12 Reed Smith lawyers with the others working under our direction) also handled 150 appeals and did 12 trainings over the summer months, all in direct support of the Greek legal services nonprofit METAdrasi.
• Reed Smith has concluded its successful class action in California compelling the federal government to grant newly-arriving immigrants the prompt hearing required by law to determine their status. For this achievement, the firm has received two awards: the Daily Journal’s 2016 CLAY Award for Pro Bono Law, and the ACLU of Southern California’s 2016 Access to Justice Award.
• Recognizing her leadership of our firm’s humanitarian work for disadvantaged women in Haiti and –more recently—in the Middle East, the New York Business Journal named our pro bono counsel Jayne Fleming one of its 2016 “Women of Influence” in the NYC area. Jayne is one of just three women from law firms among those honored.

Award highlights in Europe, Middle East and Asia include:

• In London in 2014, we won the Recruitment: Attracting Talent award at the UK Diversity Legal Awards. We were also short listed in the British Legal Awards under “Diversity Initiative of the Year”, the MPF Awards for Management Excellence under Best Diversity and Inclusion Programme and for the CSR Programme of the Year.
• We were short listed in London for social responsibility in the FT Innovative Lawyers Awards 2014 for our Social Impact Finance Group’s pro bono efforts.
• We were short listed in the British Legal Awards under “Diversity Initiative of the Year” and in the MPF Awards for Management Excellence under Best Diversity and Inclusion Programme.
• We were shortlisted for the CSR Programme of the Year in the 2015 Legal Business Awards.
• Reed Smith won the 2012 Lord Mayor’s Dragon Award for Social Inclusion for our ‘Create/U-Turn’ project. This volunteering project is aimed at improving the lives of vulnerable and socially excluded women in East London, and enabling them to build their confidence and self-esteem, learn new skills and become integrated into the wider community. The project is structured to help break down social barriers, promote relationship building and reduce isolation.