New Partners

UNITED STATES

Chicago

Daniel A. Buoniconti concentrates his Energy & Natural Resources practice in structured finance, trade finance, receivables finance, inventory finance and commercial lending. He advises clients on international and domestic revolving and term credit facilities, receivables discounting facilities, securitizations, repo and consignment transactions, borrowing base facilities and bilateral facilities. Buoniconti also represents clients in commercial arrangements involving the use of logistical assets for the storage, transportation and processing of physical commodities. He was named a 2020 Illinois Rising Star by SuperLawyers.

Alexandra M. Lucas is a member of the Global Commercial Disputes practice, where she focuses on managed care litigation and regulatory matters. She has experience in disputes relating to ERISA, the Affordable Care Act, the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA), breach of contract, healthcare claim pricing, class actions, bad faith, provider networks, antitrust, and a wide range of statutory claims. Lucas has also advised clients on compliance issues relating to emergency services, claim reimbursement methodologies, appeal and benefit communications, and prompt payment requirements.

Michael T. Wycklendt is a member of the Global Corporate Group who helps clients achieve their wealth transfer objectives. He has experience drafting wills, revocable trusts, irrevocable trusts, beneficiary designations, powers of attorney for property and health care, and agreements for family limited partnerships and limited liability companies. Wycklendt also represents executors and trustees in estate and trust administration matters, prepares gift estate, and fiduciary income tax returns, assists individuals and families with the formation and administration of private foundations, advises on charitable giving strategies, and provides guidance to charitable organizations on governance issues. 

Patrick Yingling is a member of the Appellate group. He is experienced in matters before the US Supreme Court and has successfully briefed and argued cases nationwide. His practice encompasses a range of substantive areas, including financial services and commercial disputes of all kinds. Yingling has obtained numerous pro bono wins for clients in the areas of LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights, veteran rights, mental health, anti-corruption, and democracy. He also edits and publishes the Third Circuit Bar Association’s newsletter On Appeal.

Houston

Wendell J. Bartnick is a member of the IP, Tech & Data Group. With a computer science background and experience advising on privacy, data protection, technology, and e-commerce matters, he serves clients of all sizes across a range of industries, providing counsel on regulatory compliance, data and technology-related transactions, and data breach response efforts to help them manage risks in these areas. In addition to Bartnick’s extensive experience providing guidance on compliance with comprehensive privacy laws like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), he also focuses his practice on data, technology, and software-licensing issues in Digital Health.

Nicole Soussan Caplan is a litigator in the Energy & Natural Resources Group. She represents energy industry clients in complex business litigation as well as disputes arising from exploration and production in U.S. shale plays. Soussan Caplan’s experience includes representing both plaintiffs and defendants in warranty and contract claims; drilling and well failure disputes; pipeline and other midstream incidents; lease and royalty disputes; and real estate, construction, property damage, trade secret, and nuisance claims. In addition to her energy litigation practice, Soussan Caplan has significant experience in general commercial disputes and mass tort litigation, representing clients in the construction, life sciences, services, transportation, and manufacturing industries.

Los Angeles

Benjamin R. Fliegel is a commercial litigator who combines substantive courtroom experience with traditional game theory concepts to achieve clients’ goals. As a member of the Insurance Recovery Group, his practice focuses on representing policyholders in large or protracted litigation with insurance companies and leverages his knowledge of juries, judges, and business interests to achieve favorable outcomes. Fliegel oversees coverage disputes arising across diverse industries, including finance, entertainment, products, and consumer services. He is the pro bono coordinator for the Los Angeles office, has represented governors and redistricting commissions opposed to partisan drawing of electoral districts in amicus filings before the U.S. Supreme Court, and has organized the office to sponsor local clinics for veterans, small business owners, and guardianship applicants, and national non-partisan voter information campaigns.

Ashley B. Jordan is a member of the Insurance Recovery Group where her practice focuses on helping policyholders maximize their insurance recoveries through negotiation, litigation, or alternative dispute resolution. Her clients range from individuals and start-up businesses to Fortune and Global 500 companies and represent a broad range of industries, including financial services, construction, manufacturing & distribution, pharmaceutical & healthcare, technology, and hospitality & staffing. When insurers fail to adhere to their obligations, Jordan secures defense and indemnification for third party liabilities and insurance recoveries for first party losses. She also counsels clients on contracts affecting insurance coverage and liabilities and mitigates risk by conducting insurance policy audits to identify coverage gaps. Having practiced exclusively as an insurance recovery attorney, Jordan writes and presents frequently on topics concerning insurance coverage, risk management, and bad faith liability.

New York

Anthony B. Crawford is a member of the Insurance Recovery Group. His practice focuses on advocating for and assisting policyholders in contentious, complex insurance coverage issues, serving clients ranging from banking and financial institutions to religious organizations. He provides policy reviews, coverage analyses, and counseling and dispute resolution services, with an emphasis on general liability, directors & officers, errors and omissions commercial property, mortgage, and fine arts coverage. With extensive coverage litigation experience in both state and federal courts, Crawford has also represented clients in alternative dispute resolution forums, including mediations, domestic and international arbitrations, and property insurance appraisals.

Anatoliy Rozental, a member of the Global Corporate Group, focuses on private equity transactions and domestic and cross-border mergers & acquisitions across a broad range of sectors, including consumer brands and retail, industrials and manufacturing, technology, media and telecom (TMT), financial services, healthcare, and entertainment & media.

Philadelphia

Nicole J. Aiken-Shaban is a member of the Life Sciences Health Industry Group. She advises her clients on fraud and abuse laws, including the Stark Law, federal Anti-Kickback Statute and beneficiary inducement prohibitions, and assists them in structuring complex transactions and contractual arrangements to comply with those laws. She also helps clients navigate value-based care models and payment programs, reimbursement challenges, health care licensing and matters related to the corporate practice of medicine. Aiken-Shaban's clients include health care providers and suppliers, private equity funds and other investors in the health care industry, commercial and Medicare and Medicaid managed care organizations, pharmaceutical manufacturers and biotech companies.

Lisa Szymanski, a member of the Insurance Recovery Group, represents energy companies, financial institutions, municipalities and family-owned businesses in disputes with their insurance companies. Szymanski has extensive experience with cross-border coverage disputes. She has represented numerous clients in London arbitrations from the pleadings stage through trial/settlement and has intimate knowledge of all aspects of the arbitration process, including selection of arbitrators, selection of barristers, drafting of pleadings and hearing preparation. She also has deep knowledge of portfolio coverage litigation, and has overseen dozens of cases arising from the 2017 hurricanes in Puerto Rico. Szymanski is the former Co-Chair of Reed Smith's Chinese Fellowship Committee, which hosts Chinese lawyers in the firm’s Philadelphia office each summer.

Pittsburgh

Christopher S. “Chris” Bouriat, a member of the Labor & Employment practice, handles a diverse array of employment work, from employment litigation, internal investigations, and employment counseling to advising on M&A deal work. As an experienced litigator, he represents companies of all sizes in a variety of industries in federal and state courts, as well as before federal, state, and local administrative agencies in claims of wage and hour class and collective actions; discrimination, harassment, and retaliation; contractual disputes; restrictive covenants; and disability and leave law disputes.

Christopher R. Brennan is a member of the Global Regulatory Enforcement Group. He is an antitrust lawyer who blends economic theory and competition law to help clients build efficient, compliant businesses. As a litigator, Brennan regularly defends multi-national and global clients against monopolization, price-fixing and international cartel allegations. He also is experienced in guiding a diverse mix of corporate clients through merger clearance filings, internal investigations, corporate integrity agreements, civil investigative demands, and regulatory agency subpoenas.

Jennifer M. Gardner is a member of the Global Corporate Group focusing on employee benefit and executive compensation matters. Her areas of emphasis include qualified and non-qualified retirement plans, such as 401(k) and 403(b) plans, 457 plans, and pension plans, multi-employer retirement plans, and health and welfare plans and arrangements. She often manages executive compensation arrangements subject to Code Sections 409A and 457(f), including equity compensation plans, phantom stock arrangements, nonqualified supplemental and other retirement plans. A significant portion of Gardner’s practice deals with employee benefits and executive compensation advice for transactions in which she represents both buyers and sellers in reviewing and transitioning their employee benefit plans.

Jessica R. Rose is a member of the Real Estate Group. Her practice is built around various commercial transactions, including property acquisitions and dispositions, leasing, and loans secured by commercial real estate. Rose’s experience includes assisting Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), developers and development companies, and utility and energy clients with real estate transactions from acquisitions to leasing and operating properties as well as selling properties. Rose also has significant experience representing client’s real estate interests in stock purchase and asset purchase deals.

Ginevra Ventre, a litigator in the Financial Services Litigation group, principally focuses on the defense of putative class actions in the banking, consumer finance, investment management, and securities industries. Ventre also counsels clients on various compliance, employment, and arts law matters, as well. Before joining Reed Smith in 2014, Ventre clerked for the Honorable Mark. R. Hornak of the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, for whom she served as case manager for half of all civil cases. Ventre also is a cellist. Before attending law school, Ventre was a co-founder of and cellist for The Elegua Duo, a touring classical music chamber group.

San Francisco

Maytak Chin is a strategic litigator with broad experience in dispute resolution and a trusted advisor to many corporate and public pension fund clients. Her practice focuses on complex litigation in the area of fiduciary duties, unfair competition, and business torts, with an emphasis on contract disputes and trade secret cases involving advanced and emerging technologies. She has a proven track record of winning cases and achieving client objectives in mediation, arbitration, administrative proceedings, at trial and on appeal. Chin understands that legal strategy in dispute resolution has wide-ranging ramifications for a client’s business and therefore she collaborates with her clients on litigation strategy to balance risk and optimize gains favorable to their businesses.

Washington DC

Matthew D. Jacobson, a litigator in the firm’s Life Sciences Health Industry Group, handles product liability disputes involving medical device companies. He focuses on scientific, medical, and regulatory issues in product liability cases, including expert discovery, depositions, and motions practice. In addition to medical device product liability litigation, Jacobson has handled matters involving commercial disputes, construction, consumer products, transportation, and risk management. He has worked on numerous cases relating to various products in both state and federal courts across the United States. Jacobson is also interested in 3D printing, especially its interplay with product liability law.

Karen L. Lust is an experienced Data Privacy lawyer who counsels clients on lowering enterprise risks associated with using and storing information across jurisdictions in the course of business, and particularly when responding to government investigations and litigations in the context of e-Discovery. She advises companies on best practices in cross-border data transfers and information governance issues arising in the US and around the world. Lust is CIPP/E certified under the IAPP scheme for privacy professionals in European data privacy laws. She has advised companies of all sizes and stages, but has particularly focused on helping financial and healthcare clients minimize data risk while complying with applicable laws in highly regulated industries. Her broad litigation experience includes data breach response, insurance matters, complex commercial disputes, toxic torts, financial disputes, false advertising, and antitrust matters.

UNITED KINGDOM

London

Chris Beaumont-McQuillan is a member of the Global Corporate Group who heads-up the firm’s dedicated Corporate Real Estate practice in London. He has a diverse practice, with a particular focus on big ticket and/or complex structured, usually cross-border, real estate M&A deals (investments, acquisitions, divestments), both direct and corporate-wrapped; REITs and real estate funds; and hospitality and leisure deals, including the acquisition and development of hotels and the negotiation of hotel management and franchise arrangements and operating leases. Beaumont-McQuillan has wide experience of real estate laws, practices and customs in the UK and Middle East (where he lived and worked for five years, from 2013 to 2018) and he has also executed deals across the United States, Continental Europe, Africa and the Far East. His clients include financial institutions, sovereign wealth funds, private equity funds, hedge funds, asset managers, hotel owners and operators, and developers.

Nick Breen is a member of Reed Smith’s Entertainment and Media Industry Group, and focuses on digital media, music, advertising, video games, theatre and content distribution. Breen regularly advises clients on the production, licensing and distribution of content on various platforms and networks. In particular, Breen works extensively with music and film digital service providers across Europe and has broad experience in managing client’s relationships with content providers, talent and consumers. Breen also advises brands, broadcasters and tech start-ups on a range of copyright, clearance and general commercial matters. In addition, Breen continues to advise music artists, managers and promoters on a broad range of matters from production, management, label and publishing agreements, to sponsorship arrangements.

Frances Furness is a member of the Energy & Natural Resources Group whose practice involves both non-contentious transactional work and dispute resolution. Her day-to-day work includes drafting, negotiating and advising on commercial agreements related to energy and commodities, including sale and purchase documentation, and agreements for transportation, storage, tolling, inventory financing, marketing and sales, lifting, and insurance of commodities, including oil, petroleum products, and LNG as well as acting in disputes arising out of these transactions. Furness has insight into the operations of clients’ businesses in the energy and commodities industry having previously worked as in-house counsel at a privately owned exploration and production group.

Simon Greer is a member of Reed Smith’s Global Commercial Disputes Group in London. His work focuses on international arbitration, commercial litigation, banking & financial services litigation, professional negligence disputes (particularly in the fields of construction, engineering and financial services) and IP, media and technology litigation. Greer represents clients in jurisdictions worldwide, and he is recommended for international arbitration and commercial litigation in Legal 500 2020 and for professional negligence disputes in Legal 500 2017, 2018 and 2019. He authored the chapter “Delivering justice or resolving the dispute?” in Carlos González-Bueno’s book “40 Under 40 in International Arbitration 2018.”

Adam Hedley advises on UK, EU and international environmental, climate change and health & safety law matters. His principal focus is compliance advisory and transactional work, and he also represents clients in regulatory enforcement and environmental litigation matters. His practice covers a broad spectrum of operational and governance issues, including on- and off-shore pollution and contamination, climate change and emissions trading, product compliance and liability, environmental permitting, waste management, producer responsibility obligations, and occupational health and safety. Hedley has been consistently ranked as a “rising star” by Legal 500 and an “associate to watch” by Chambers UK.

Andrzej W. Janiszewski is a member of the Financial Industry Group, where he handles structured finance and impact finance transactions. He advises financial institutions and corporate clients on new structured finance and derivative transactions as well as on restructurings and structured finance litigation. In addition, he is a founding member of the firm’s social impact finance team and advises NGO, international development institutions and charities on innovative financial solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.

Thor Maalouf, a member of the Transportation Industry Group, advises on commercial shipping and maritime law, including charterparties, bills of lading, contracts for freight and logistics services, shipbuilding contracts, and luxury yachts. She also handles reorganizations of freight/logistics services provision, electronic bills of lading, exploration of the seabed, and oil pollution incidents. Maalouf has extensive experience of mediation, litigation and arbitration. She was named the “Associate to Watch” in Shipping Law by Chambers & Partners in 2016, 2017 and 2018 and as a “Rising Star” by Legal 500 in 2019 and 2018.

Stephen Mooney is a member of the Global Corporate Group. He advises clients across a range of sectors on corporate and commercial matters, including M&A, private equity investments, venture capital, joint ventures and group reorganizations, with a particular focus on working with companies in the technology, media and entertainment and real estate industries. He also has significant experience in representing early stage and fast growth companies in funding rounds and is recommended by Legal 500 UK for venture capital work, being noted as "excellent at negotiating terms with potential investors.”

Jody Wood is a member of the Transportation Industry Group whose practice is focused on commercial litigation and international arbitration. His practice includes disputes in shipping, trade and aviation, and he represents maritime owners, charterers, managers, insurers, banks, funds and commodity traders. He is experienced in the enforcement of lending positions, including strategies for arrest and possession of vessels. Seasoned in the management of arbitral references seated in London, Singapore and Hong Kong, Wood regularly handles references administered under the rules of the LMAA, SIAC, HKIAC and SCMA. Wood was appointed a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in 2017. Working in Singapore between 2008 and 2017, he was a founding member of Reed Smith’s Singapore office in 2012.

ASIA

Hong Kong

Donald Sham is a member of the Hong Kong Litigation practice, where he specializes in court litigation and arbitration proceedings. He has extensive experience in handling complex and high-value matters including those involving multiple jurisdictions and interim measures. He also regularly acts in enforcement proceedings of arbitral awards and judgments in Hong Kong. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, a Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Arbitrators, the Secretary of the Hong Kong Maritime Law Association and a part-time Lecturer at The University of Hong Kong. '

Steve Tam is a member of the Hong Kong Litigation practice and focuses on commercial litigation and arbitration, including shareholder and boardroom disputes, liquidations and bankruptcies, commodity disputes and banking litigation. He also advises on non-contentious matters, particularly employment, privacy and insurance. Tam has experience in handling regulatory and disciplinary matters involving listed companies, licensed corporations, banks and insurance intermediaries, as well as white collar crimes and investigations.

New Counsel

Reed Smith’s new 30-member counsel group includes 22 lawyers from the firm’s US offices and eight from its offices in the UK, Europe and Asia, including six from London; four each from New York and Philadelphia; three from Chicago; two each from Miami, Princeton and Washington DC; and one each from Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles; Pittsburgh; Tysons and Richmond.

In the US include Jason T. Mayer (Global Commercial Disputes), Joshua W. Newman (IP, Tech & Data) and Karlin E. Sangdahl (Global Commercial Disputes) in Chicago; Rodrigo Morales Draxl (Energy & Natural Resources) in Houston; and Michael R. Kleinmann (Labor & Employment) in Los Angeles.

Others new counsel are Miami-based Ana M. Barton (Global Commercial Disputes) and Christopher T. Kuleba (Insurance Recovery); New York-based Hernan Gonzalez Moneta (Global Corporate Group), Nicole Lapsatis Lech (Financial Industry Group), Jillian Petrera (Entertainment & Media Industry Group) and Daniel M. Philion (Financial Industry Group); and Philadelphia-based Brent K. Beissel (State Tax), Jeffrey R. Melton (Global Regulatory Enforcement), Regina M. Nelson (Life Sciences Health Industry Group) and Lauren S. Zabel (Financial Industry Group).

Additional new US counsel include Pittsburgh-based Max Louik (Insurance Recovery Group); Princeton-based Jennifer A. Eppensteiner (Life Sciences Health Industry) and Gregory D. Speier (Global Commercial Disputes; Richmond-based Alison R.W. Toepp (Global Commercial Disputes); Tysons-based John A. McWilliams (Global Corporate Group); and Washington DC-based Megan F. Engel (Life Sciences Health Industry Group) and Manasi Venkatesh (Global Regulatory Enforcement).
Reed Smith associates in the UK promoted to counsel include Mike Adamson (Transportation Industry Group); Simone Goligorsky (Energy & Natural Resources); Robert C. Lowe (Global Corporate Group), Oliver Rawkins (Global Commercial Disputes), Laura Riddeck (Energy & Natural Resources) and Patrick J. Sutton (Energy & Natural Resources) in the London office. The firm’s new Asian and European counsel are Eugene Gu (Global Corporate Group) in Hong Kong and Phillip Schmidt (Global Corporate Group) in Frankfurt.

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 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.