Pro Bono / Responsible Business Awards

Award highlights in the U.S.:

• 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.
• The D.C. Circuit Judicial Conference again honored Reed Smith at its 2016 "40 at 50 Breakfast" (more than 40 percent of the firm's Washington lawyers did 50 or more pro bono hours).
• The Allegheny County Bar Association awarded its 2015 Pro Bono Achievement Award to Reed Smith and BNY Mellon, for collaborating to form the Transgender Name Change Project in Pittsburgh. This active Project took top honors in the “New Initiative” category.
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of America gave its coveted Common Good Award for 2015 to Reed Smith, in appreciation of the firm’s pro bono work for Big Brothers and its chapters. The firm has provided $2.1 million in pro bono legal support since 2012.
• The Washington DC Bar Association in 2015 named, as one of its two “Pro Bono Lawyers of the Year”, Reed Smith partner Gary Thompson. The Bar Association recognized Gary for his long record of outstanding pro bono work both for the indigent and for public causes in the district.
• The National Law Journal named our Pro Bono Counsel, Jayne Fleming, one of the “Most Outstanding Women Lawyers” in the U.S. Jayne was cited for her “zeal for social justice” and resulting Haiti evacuation program, and because her “federal appellate work strengthened US asylum case law for Guatemalan civil war rape victims and homosexual men”. The recognition ceremony occurred in New York in June 2015.
• The National Law Journal featured Reed Smith on its 2015 "Pro Bono Hot List" for our pro bono work in Haiti.
• Reed Smith's Haiti pro bono project won the top award in the "Innovation in a Social Responsibility Project" category at the Financial Times’ 2014 Innovative Lawyers Awards ceremony in New York. Awards for North America were given in ten categories. The Haiti Project has brought to safety in the United States and Canada 60 Haitian women and children victimized by gender-based violence in tent camps after the 2010 earthquake.
• Reed Smith was named 2014 “Pro Bono Firm of the Year” by the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.
• Reed Smith won the American Bar Association's Exceptional Service in Death Penalty Representations Award, presented in Houston Texas. The Firm is handling eight death penalty cases in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Alabama.
• Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a nonprofit leader in the rebuilding of distressed neighborhoods, in a ceremony attended by the Mayor of Philadelphia, presented a beautiful crystal award to Reed Smith, recognizing continuous pro bono work done since 2004 for LISC and its borrowers by lawyers throughout the firm's U.S. offices.

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.