Designed in partnership with leading law company Elevate, Reed Smith Global Solutions (RSGS) has been developed to improve the speed, flexibility, quality and efficiency of legal services delivery across EMEA. With a focus on process excellence, technology innovation and continuous improvement, the centre complements Reed Smith’s recognised capabilities for delivering some of the most sophisticated legal services across the globe.
An initial range of services were piloted after Reed Smith entered into a partnership with Elevate in early 2019; these are now being extended to all practice groups and clients globally.
Services currently available to our clients include: litigation and transactional document review, conditions precedent coordination and drafting, sanctions checks, insolvency reporting, matter management support and post completion activities for real estate, funds, REF and asset finance, bibling and bundling, shipping investigations, company reports, global projects for Employment, transcription and translation, due diligence and data room management.
RSGS - driving continuous improvement
With centres in Leeds and Pittsburgh, RSGS is the firm’s start-up environment where lawyers, analysts and business services professionals collaborate on improvements in legal services delivery. It currently comprises more than 500 lawyers, analysts and business services staff.
The range of services are in continual development in line with client demand, but the innovative ethos of the centres enables Reed Smith to move quickly and proactively test new offerings in response to market needs. Over the past six months, RSGS’s ability to quickly scale and support delivery of new solutions has proven vital as the firm responded to the unexpected challenges raised by COVID-19.
RSGS solutions provide support to in-house legal departments in four broad areas:
Empowering Talent – working with in-house teams – and wider businesses – to identify where improvements to working processes can deliver the most benefit.
Enhancing Efficiencies – help clients in determining industry benchmarks, accessing the impact of regulatory changes, and weighing technology advances to help drive continuous improvement.
Risk Reimagined – combining clients’ data with ours and, together with market intelligence, use AI tools to identify problems and opportunities that otherwise couldn’t be spotted.
Technology Solutions – identifying and deploying tools to help clients get the most from their people in terms of productivity and creative thinking while reducing risks and effectively managing data.
The Leeds centre, which opened in 2018, is already home to over 50 analysts and business services professionals, all of whom are qualified Lean Six Sigma practitioners. (Lean Six Sigma is the widely recognised leading methodology for robust continuous improvement, quality management and process control). Through the firm’s partnership with Elevate, the firm also now have nearly 20 permanent Sigma Law Specialists dedicated to the delivery and improvement of legal services with plans to hire more as new services are developed and rolled out across the firm.
Flexible legal resourcing
As part of its partnership with Elevate, Reed Smith can provide its clients with a flexible lawyer offering, with access to a talent pool of over 1,000 experienced lawyers and legal consultants on a fully flexible basis to support with client work.
Access to this new talent pool leveraging ElevateFlex, Elevate’s flexible resourcing business unit, enables Reed Smith to reassign its associates away from process-oriented legal work, giving them more opportunities to focus on strategic advisory work for clients.
Forward-thinking partnership
Sandy Thomas, Reed Smith global managing partner, said: “Our partnership with Elevate is a significant next step for our Reed Smith Global Solutions platform. We were among the first law firms to invest in a forward-thinking legal model when we opened our Global Customer Centre in Pittsburgh in 2009. Now, utilising RSGS, we are building on our commitment to respond to our clients’ demand for innovation in legal services delivery. We are proud to once again be among the vanguard of modern law.”
Liam Brown, Chairman and CEO of Elevate, commented: “We are delighted to be partnering with Reed Smith in this exciting new initiative to provide next-generation legal services and flexible lawyering to the firm and its clients. Elevate’s management systems ensure that the legal, business, and technology professionals we provide meet Reed Smith’s exceptional quality standards.”
Tamara Box, Reed Smith managing partner for Europe and the Middle East, commented: “We are very excited to expand our Reed Smith Global Solutions offering. Through RSGS and Elevate, we will be able to provide clients with the benefits of improved project and process management and integrated services delivery. In addition, RSGS allows us to incubate and develop next-generation legal services that will benefit our clients worldwide, using new ways of collaborative working developed at our centres.
“We have embedded a culture of innovation-first throughout the firm. Having the new services provided by RSGS enables our lawyers to prioritise their roles as strategic advisers to our clients, and expands our ability to provide clients with holistic legal support that addresses their every need. In times of change, new solutions are required to solve new problems; RSGS is proving an important resource to ensure we can continue to support our clients in driving their businesses forward.
“We have been providing what are often called ‘alternative’ legal services for a number of years now. To us, there is little alternative about it; it is simply providing cutting-edge legal services. Our partnership with Elevate gives us additional scale, experience and flexibility.”
Barry Spenceley, Reed Smith Global Solutions Leeds centre director, commented: “We began to hire analysts and business services professionals into our Leeds Global Solutions team in 2018, and our focus has now moved to the next phase of delivering legal services. The Leeds office is designed to foster collaboration and innovation between team, which ensures clients are getting truly cutting edge legal services.”
In October 2019, Reed Smith became the first international law firm to convert to an Alternative Business Structure (ABS), underlining its commitment to delivering innovative client services that extend beyond traditional legal advice.
Unlike the traditionally regulated law firm model, the ABS permits law firms to be managed and/or owned by individuals who are not legally trained, to provide services beyond traditional legal advice and even to receive external investment. This means, in part, that such firms can benefit from talent within their partnership from any field and thereby amass a wider range of commercial acumen and technical expertise to support clients.
About Reed Smith
Reed Smith is a dynamic international law firm dedicated to helping clients move their businesses forward. Our belief is that by delivering smarter and more creative legal services, we will not only enrich our clients’ experiences with us, but also support them in achieving their business goals.
Our long-standing relationships, international outlook and collaborative structure, make us the go-to partner for the speedy resolution of complex disputes, transactions and regulatory matters.
For further information, please visit reedsmith.com.
About Elevate
Elevate is a law company, providing consulting, technology and services to law departments and law firms. The company’s multi-disciplinary team of legal professionals, business professionals, and technology professionals extend and enable the resources and capabilities of customers worldwide. Learn more at elevateservices.com.
