Jordan Leaving Reed Smith to Serve as PNC GC

Longtime Reed Smith global managing partner Gregory B. Jordan is leaving the firm to serve as general counsel of PNC Financial Services Group, the firm announced today.

Reed Smith Appoints New Leader in New York

By Christine Simmons All Articles 

New York Law Journal

March 15, 2013

Reed Smith has appointed a new managing partner for its New York office, Edward Estrada, who said he plans to aggressively recruit laterals in corporate and private equity, among other practices.

Jordan Siev, the firm's former managing partner in New York since 2011, is now co-head of Reed Smith's U.S. commercial litigation group. Estrada was formerly in that role and is a former executive committee member.

Estrada said he has been meeting with recruiters to find strong lateral partner and associate candidates in New York, noting there are "a number of folks in the pipeline." He added, "We have a lot of strength and a lot of demand from our clients" in the corporate, private equity and financial services practices.

Estrada is a member of the firm's financial industry group, focusing on hedge funds and commercial restructuring and bankruptcy. He represents clients in litigation, ADR, bankruptcy proceedings and restructurings. The Pittsburgh-founded firm began its New York branch in 1995 with six lawyers. The office now has about 160 lawyers among its 1,600 firmwide attorney count.

Reed Smith Adds Cozen O'Connor Health Care Lawyer

Reed Smith added health care regulatory lawyer Salvatore G. Rotella Jr. as a partner in its life sciences health industry group in Philadelphia.

Reed Smith Crosses Billion-Dollar Revenue Mark

Reed Smith saw increases in its key financial metrics between 2011 and 2012 that the firm attributed in large part to its cross-selling to its core industry groups.

Reed Smith Crosses Billion-Dollar Revenue Mark

Reed Smith saw increases in its key financial metrics between 2011 and 2012 that the firm attributed in large part to its cross-selling to its core industry groups.

Corner Office: Ryan Smith of Qualtrics, on Building a Transparent Culture

Q. What were some early leadership lessons for you?

A. I definitely had an interesting upbringing. There are five children, and everyone’s been pretty successful. My parents are both Ph.D.’s — they were in academia until the late stages of their careers, when they decided to go into entrepreneurial ventures.

They raised us with the mentality of “if you want it, you’ve got to go out and get it.” I remember when I was 13, my mother dropped us off in downtown Provo one summer, about two miles from where we lived, and said, “You guys are all paying for your clothes this year. Don’t come home till you have jobs.” They instilled in us the idea that “you can be anything you want to be, but you’re going to have to go do it.”

Q. How did you start Qualtrics?

A. I was a sophomore in college and working in L.A. for Hewlett-Packard on a summer program. My father was diagnosed with throat cancer, so I took a semester off school to be with him. He was always tinkering with technology to make the research world better. And when he would come home from his radiation treatments, he couldn’t speak. I bonded with him by helping him with his work. The cancer was very severe, and he needed something to look forward to. So we would work together, and by the time he recovered from the cancer, I had signed up 20 clients and we had formed a business. We’re 290 employees now, and we’ll probably double in size in the next 18 months.

Q. Tell me about the culture you’re trying to foster.

A. We’ve been extremely transparent, but not so that we can be cool. And it’s not about an open environment, because that’s not what makes a company transparent. It’s more around the fact that everyone needs to know where we are going and how we are going to get there.

So we want everyone to understand our objectives and make that available to everyone as we’re evolving, so people aren’t guessing and they’re not internally focused. That’s one obstacle a lot of companies fall into. I believe most companies fail because they’re not focused — they either get focused on other things in the market that aren’t important, so they’re thrashing around without a clear objective, or they’re focused internally on things like politics and bureaucracy. It’s not that these companies aren’t smart companies or lack good businesses. It’s just that there’s a lot of noise.

We want to be transparent because we want to encourage our people to have all the information to keep them focused on what really matters — our objectives and how they’re going to contribute.

Q. Can you give more details about how that works?

A. We took our best product guy and some of our best engineers and built a system internally to help scale our organization by knowing everyone’s objectives in the company. We have five objectives annually for our company, and everyone goes into the system each quarter to put in their objectives that play into those broader goals.

For one of the broader objectives, you might have 230 specific objectives. The reason we’re making all this available is, especially nowadays, you’re hiring individuals to think. We can’t control the way they think. All we can control or have an effect on is the environment around them.

We have another system that sends everyone an e-mail on Monday that says: “What are you going to get done this week? And what did you get done last week that you said you were going to do?” Then that rolls up into one e-mail that the entire organization gets. So if someone’s got a question, they can look at that for an explanation. We share other information, too — every time we have a meeting, we release meeting notes to the organization. When we have a board meeting, we write a letter about it afterward and send it to the organization.

When everyone’s rowing together toward the same objective, it’s extremely powerful. We’re trying to execute at a very high level, and we need to make sure everyone knows where we’re going.

The point is that it’s not like we just said, “Hey, we’re going to be transparent.”  We look at every decision and then say, “Why shouldn’t we share this with everyone?” And we do that instead of the default reaction of saying, “We’re not going to share anything.” It might make some people uncomfortable, but that’s not a good-enough argument. 

Q. Let’s shift to hiring. How does the conversation go? What are you looking for? What questions do you ask?

A. We definitely want someone with a high trajectory. The organization is going to change quickly — we’re not perfect, and we make mistakes. We want to find individuals who align with that, who will add value to the company in whatever role they’re in. Part of that is the disposition to be willing to do whatever it’s going to take, because we feel that if we win as a team, we’re going to win together.

Q. Tell me more about how you get at those qualities.

A. From my standpoint, I’m looking to see if someone’s a “gamer” — that’s what I call it. I want to know the hardest thing they’ve ever done. So if you were in Korea, traveling by yourself, did you go home when things got tough? That’s what I’m trying to figure out because when the ship’s going well, everyone’s good. But when obstacles come up, we’ve got to sit back and rethink, how are we going to navigate these? Will some people want to jump off the ship? Or are they going to be a gamer and want to come in, roll up their sleeves and say, “Hey, this is part of it.”

That’s what I’m looking for. I want someone who’s going to roll up their sleeves when a little bit of challenge comes their way.

I think you can pick that up by looking at someone’s career. When times get tough, do they stick in? Because most good things happen after you hit a rough patch. If things are too easy, we probably didn’t learn enough.

The interview has been edited and condensed.

With Houston Opening, Reed Smith Forgoes Typical Expansion Strategy

After years of trying to find a merger partner to help it launch in Houston, Reed Smith decided it didn't want to wait any longer and instead moved to open an office from scratch.

Reed Smith Picks Up Dechert Life Sciences Partner

Reed Smith has hired former Dechert partner Stephen J. McConnell to the firm?s life sciences and health industry group in Philadelphia.

Ashurst Boosts Asia Disputes With Herbert Smith Hires

By Jessica Seah All Articles 

The Asian Lawyer

December 10, 2012

Ashurst has added two new partners to its disputes practice in Asia.

Robert Palmer and Christopher Bailey are both joining Ashurst from Herbert Smith Freehills, where they were respectively an of counsel in Singapore and a consultant in Bangkok.

The two will both join the firm's Singapore office initially, though Bailey will later relocate to Tokyo.

Palmer specializes in international arbitration work related to energy and infrastructure sectors. Bailey, who will become Ashurst's first disputes partner in Tokyo, will focus on advising Japanese clients on their overseas disputes. Before transferring to Bangkok last year, Bailey had worked in Herbert Smith's Tokyo office for five years, including a period of secondment to a Japanese trading house.

According to its website, London-based Ashurst has 19 lawyers in its Tokyo office and 16 lawyers in Singapore. With its merger earlier this year with Australia's Blake Dawson, Ashurst has more than 1,700 lawyers worldwide.

Reed Smith Adds Cozen O'Connor Health Care Lawyer

Reed Smith added health care regulatory lawyer Salvatore G. Rotella Jr. as a partner in its life sciences health industry group in Philadelphia.

Reed Smith Starts Emergency Relief and Injunction Practice

Reed Smith has created a new practice group geared toward helping clients in need of emergency litigation services. The emergency relief and injunction team consists of nine members of the firm?s commercial litigation and disputes practice.

Reed Smith Starts Emergency Relief and Injunction Practice

Reed Smith has created a new practice group geared toward helping clients in need of emergency litigation services. The emergency relief and injunction team consists of nine members of the firm?s commercial litigation and disputes practice.

Reed Smith Picks Up Dechert Life Sciences Partner

Reed Smith has hired former Dechert partner Stephen J. McConnell to the firm?s life sciences and health industry group in Philadelphia.

Reed Smith, K&L Gates Double Down on Veteran Leaders

For two very different guys, Reed Smith's Greg Jordan and K&L Gates' Pete Kalis have a lot in common. The two West Virginia natives rose to lead their respective Pittsburgh-based law firms well more than a decade ago and both have recently won unopposed elections to additional terms for the next three and five years, respectively.

Common Sense: ‘Why I Left Goldman Sachs,’ by Greg Smith, Falls Short

Mr. Smith’s letter clearly hit a popular nerve, coming as it did during a devastating financial crisis in which Goldman emerged as the rich, arrogant and unfeeling perpetrator of much of the financial wreckage still afflicting Americans. And it’s hard to quarrel with Mr. Smith’s overriding message: Wall Street should put clients interests’ first or risk oblivion. Indeed, that was Goldman Sachs’s own credo, “Our clients’ interests always come first.”

But stripped of its incendiary conclusions, Mr. Smith’s manifesto was curiously short on facts. Other than the now-infamous reference to muppets — “I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as ‘muppets,’ sometimes over internal e-mail” — there were no examples of a toxic culture at work, no actual names of morally bankrupt people and no examples of a client getting ripped off. Mr. Smith declined to elaborate after the article was published, heightening suspense and no doubt fueling the literary bidding that reached a reported $1.5 million for a book that would deliver the goods.

That book, “Why I Left Goldman Sachs,” goes on sale on Monday. Despite tight security, copies of the book have been circulating, and I read one. The book not only fails to deliver concrete examples to back up his sweeping conclusions, but he admits changing “names or descriptors” for some (but not all) people and acknowledges that what he does disclose is “from memory.”

He says he has tried “to retain the spirit” of what actually occurred. This makes it nearly impossible to verify much of what he says.

Beyond that, from his perch on the equity trading desk he seems to have had a narrow view of the institution where he worked for nearly 12 years. His disillusionment comes across as heartfelt, but much of it seems to have come less from his own experiences than from news reports about the firm’s behavior in deals he wasn’t involved in.

Mr. Smith’s book might even bolster Goldman’s reputation. After all, if Mr. Smith is the ultimate insider, and this is as bad as it gets — Mr. Smith in a hot tub at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas with a topless woman — then he hasn’t made much of a case.

But Mr. Smith isn’t in much of a position to exonerate Goldman, either. The firm was deeply enmeshed in nearly all aspects of the financial crisis and its causes, including mortgage-backed securities. And after an injection of taxpayer support, it managed to profit handsomely and pay the lavish bonuses that Mr. Smith shared in. But you won’t find that story in “Why I Left.”

Mr. Smith declined to discuss any of this before his scheduled appearance on Sunday on “60 Minutes.” Goldman Sachs responded to some of my questions with copies of parts of their internal investigation and made several employees available.

Potential problems with Mr. Smith’s approach surface almost immediately. The first paragraph of Chapter 1 describes “an intern named Josh” who’s being “grilled” and asked to explain risk arbitrage but “was floundering badly.” Josh, Mr. Smith adds, is the son of a billionaire.

There was no “Josh” in Mr. Smith’s group of interns, and only one son of a billionaire: Teddy Schwarzman, son of Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and chief executive of the asset management firm Blackstone Group.

“I was never grilled on risk arbitrage, or asked to give a presentation on it,” Mr. Schwarzman said when I contacted him this week. “I realize it was a long time ago, but I would certainly have remembered it if I had floundered.” Nor did anyone else in the class I spoke to recall such an episode.

Reed Smith Opens in Singapore

Reed Smith has continued its expansion into Asia with the opening of a Singapore office this month.

The launch has been in the works for about two years and makes for the firm's fourth office in Asia after Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. Reed Smith now has more than 135 lawyers in the region.

Global managing partner Gregory B. Jordan said the firm will have a tailored focus in Singapore, concentrating on its trading and commodities practice, shipping and international arbitration.

The trading and commodities practice is housed within Reed Smith's energy and natural resources industry group, which will play a large role in the Singapore location. And the firm's financial industry group represents a number of large banks that are involved in the trading and commodities market, Jordan noted.

To start, the office will have five partners and, in short order, will be up to about 15 attorneys once associates are brought on board, Jordan said. With the amount of work the firm expects to get from its existing clients doing business in Singapore and the work brought over from some of the new lawyers, Jordan said he would anticipate the Singapore office adding between $10 million and $15 million in revenue by the end of the first full calendar year.

Reed Smith's Singapore office will be led by Gautam Bhattacharyya, who will relocate from London, and will also include new partners Barry Stimpson, Simon Sloane and Philip Antcliffe. An additional lawyer from the firm's London office has also relocated.

Reed Smith has leased temporary office space in Singapore and will move into permanent space in Ocean Financial Centre in early 2013.

Stimpson and Sloane will join the firm from London-based Holman Fenwick Willan. Antcliffe is rejoining Reed Smith after departing the firm in 2011 for Citigroup. Prior to his move, Antcliffe was an associate in Reed Smith's energy and natural resources group in London.

While a number of Am Law 200 firms, including K&L Gates, applied for Singapore's second offering of a Qualifying Foreign Law Practice license this summer, Reed Smith has foregone that route because it doesn't intend to practice local Singaporean law.

Singapore first opened its doors to foreign firms in 2000 by allowing joint ventures and then issued the first round of QFLPs in 2008. Six firms, mainly from London, were awarded the licenses and more than 20 firms applied for the second round in 2012. The licenses have not yet been awarded.

Reed Smith Picks Up Dechert Life Sciences Partner

Reed Smith has hired former Dechert partner Stephen J. McConnell to the firm?s life sciences and health industry group in Philadelphia.

Reed Smith Forms Alliance With Greek Firm

Pittsburgh-based Reed Smith has formed a strategic alliance with Athens, Greece-based business law firm Papapolitis & Papapolitis, aiming to team up on the "large projects and transactions" anticipated to come out of the economic struggles and structural reforms in Greece, according to a joint press release sent out Monday.

Reed Smith has had an office in Piraeus, Greece, since 2007, when it merged with 250-lawyer, London-based firm Richards Butler.

The firm currently has eight lawyers, including three partners, based in the office, which focuses mainly on shipping, life sciences, commercial disputes and corporate work.

According to a scan of the Am Law 100, Reed Smith is the only U.S.-based firm with an office in Greece.

In fact, it appears to be one of only three firms on the Global 100, along with Allen & Overy and Norton Rose, that have Greek offices.

Papapolitis & Papapolitis is a 114-year-old firm with 17 lawyers that centers its practice on banking, finance and capital markets, corporate governance, corporate and mergers and acquisitions, dispute resolution, real estate and tax law.

According to the press release, the two firms have had "an informal working relationship" for the past two years.

Reed Smith global managing partner Gregory B. Jordan told The Legal Intelligencer Monday that the formation of the strategic alliance is an opportunity for Reed Smith to partner with a "strong and well-established" Greek firm.

"We've become increasingly close with the Papapolitis firm," Jordan said. "The purpose of the alliance is to get closer with them and to let the marketplace know."

Jordan said the two firms will now embark on joint marketing efforts.

Reed Smith Forms Alliance With Greek Firm

Flag of Greece/clipart.com 2012

Pittsburgh-based Reed Smith has formed a strategic alliance with Athens, Greece-based business law firm Papapolitis & Papapolitis, aiming to team up on the "large projects and transactions" anticipated to come out of the economic struggles and structural reforms in Greece, according to a joint press release sent out Monday.

Reed Smith has had an office in Piraeus, Greece, since 2007, when it merged with 250-lawyer, London-based firm Richards Butler.

The firm currently has eight lawyers, including three partners, based in the office, which focuses mainly on shipping, life sciences, commercial disputes and corporate work.

According to a scan of the Am Law 100, Reed Smith is the only U.S.-based firm with an office in Greece.

In fact, it appears to be one of only three firms on the Global 100, along with Allen & Overy and Norton Rose, that have Greek offices.

Papapolitis & Papapolitis is a 114-year-old firm with 17 lawyers that centers its practice on banking, finance and capital markets, corporate governance, corporate and mergers and acquisitions, dispute resolution, real estate and tax law.

According to the press release, the two firms have had "an informal working relationship" for the past two years.

Reed Smith global managing partner Gregory B. Jordan told The Legal Intelligencer Monday that the formation of the strategic alliance is an opportunity for Reed Smith to partner with a "strong and well-established" Greek firm.

"We've become increasingly close with the Papapolitis firm," Jordan said. "The purpose of the alliance is to get closer with them and to let the marketplace know."

Jordan said the two firms will now embark on joint marketing efforts.

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Reed Smith Forms Alliance With Greek Firm

Reed Smith has formed a strategic alliance with Athens, Greece-based business law firm Papapolitis & Papapolitis, aiming to team up on the "large projects and transactions" anticipated to come out of the economic struggles and structural reforms in Greece.