Photo: J. Albert Diaz/ALM

Reed Smith has reshuffled its senior management team, naming Pittsburgh-based Douglas Cameron, previously global chairman of the firm's litigation department, to serve as its managing partner for the Americas.

Cameron replaces Philadelphia-based Michael Pollack, who announced in March that after 35 years he would be retiring from the firm at the end of 2019. The firm also named Chicago-based Peter Ellis to succeed Cameron as the global chairman of litigation, and tapped Los Angeles litigator Janet Kwuon to serve as the new co-chairwoman of its global commercial disputes group. Both sit on the firm's executive committee.

All three attorneys started in their new roles July 1.

“Reed Smith is fortunate to have a deep bench of experienced partners who are extremely capable of assuming these top leadership positions,” global managing partner Sandy Thomas said in a statement. “These three partners—Doug Cameron, Peter Ellis and Janet Kwuon—have already served in important leadership roles at the firm for years, and I am looking forward to their contributions to our clients, our partnership and our business.”

Cameron, who became litigation chairman in 2016, previously spent 13 years as the leader of Reed Smith's insurance recovery group and has 35 years of experience with the firm. He will oversee the firm's more than 1,000 attorneys in 17 offices in the U.S., and will also assess opportunities for expansion elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere.

“We have to be open to growth outside the continental U.S. that dovetails with our client base and practices,” Cameron said in an interview.

Outgoing Americas managing partner Michael Pollack of Reed Smith. Courtesy photo.

While leading the litigation division, he helped grow the firm's international arbitration practice, and presided over the launch of the firm's Women in the Courtroom Initiative and the global commercial disputes group.

He said that while his previous role featured a tighter focus on the operations and profits and losses of individual practice groups, in his new role, he'll be focused on linking individual office priorities with the strategies of the firm's different practice groups and its wider strategy.

“I will serve as a key facilitator for client and talent information for all of our U.S. markets,” Cameron said.

Ellis, the new global litigation chairman, previously served as co-chairman of the global commercial disputes group. The group emerged from a combination of Reed Smith's U.S. complex litigation and Europe and Middle East commercial disputes practice groups, and includes litigators from the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In addition to helping complete this combination, Ellis also worked with Cameron to enhance the firm's trial initiative and expanded the visibility of its class action practice.

His co-chairman, Peter Hardy, based in London, will continue to lead the group alongside Kwuon, who was earlier the firm's global director of complex litigation and e-discovery. She has practiced at Reed Smith or its predecessor firm Crosby Heafey for all but five of her 30 years as a lawyer.

The changes mean that Pollack will spend his last six months at the firm outside of its leadership, after serving in senior management since 2001.

“Michael has been so integral in making Reed Smith what it is today,” Thomas added. “His understanding of the legal industry as it evolved over the last 30 years made his judgment on nearly every aspect of our business a competitive advantage. It has also earned him a reputation in the industry as one of its clearest thinkers and best operators. We congratulate Michael on a job well done and wish him all the best in the future.”

Before serving as managing partner for the Americas, Pollack served as Reed Smith's chief legal officer and global head of strategy. He was involved in seven significant merger transactions, including combinations in London, Hong Kong, Chicago and California. He also had the responsibility for opening Reed Smith offices in Houston, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore.

“It has been an honor to be part of the Reed Smith family and very gratifying to see how far we have come since I started with the firm,” Pollack said in a statement. “We've moved from being a Mid-Atlantic regional firm to a true global powerhouse. I am very proud of the firm we built together.”

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