Reed Smith LLP
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Reed Smith is the perfect fit for associates who want to take on challenging legal work in a laid-back, welcoming environment. Partners here are active mentors, and on-the-job training is supplemented with courses through Reed Smith University. Reed Smith is a full-service shop, serving corporate and commercial clients on litigation, transactional, regulatory, and other matters. It also fields multi-disciplinary industry groups dedicated to clients in the life sciences, media and entertainment, energy and natural resources, shippi...
Total No. Attorneys (2021)
No. of Partners Named (2021)
Featured Rankings
No. of 1st Year Associates Hired (2020)
No. of Summer Associates (2021)
Base Salary
Reed Smith focuses its recruiting efforts on top candidates, often from regional schools, and looks for down-to-earth people with diverse life experiences. Attorneys are laid back and friendly, and there are social opportunities beyond the work day for those interested. Partners keep tabs on associate workloads and are active mentors. There is some haziness with respect to promotion and compensation decisions, but high-level firm information is transparent. The 2,000-hour billable-hours requirement includes allowances for diversity and pro bono work—most feel this is perfectly reasonable, and any complaints about hours tend to focus on uneven distribution of work. Salaries start at market but diverge from lockstep at year three; bonuses are reportedly under market and require meet...
A Pittsburgh native long intertwined with the city’s industrial kingpins, Reed Smith joined the crowd in globalizing via international mergers in the 21st century. With litigation at the forefront, the firm’s practice strengths also include cross-border transactional and regulatory work.
Steel City Origins
Reed Smith LLP’s rise to prominence can be at least partly credited to a symbiotic relationship with an American industrial tycoon. Attorney James Reed, who founded the firm in Pittsburgh with Philander Knox in 1877, cultivated strong ties with the man most singularly responsible for giving Steel City its blue-collar identity: Andrew Carnegie. In addition to leading the firm’s representation of Carnegie at the peak of his empire-building, Reed served as a charter director of Carnegie...