Adam Massaro is joined by fellow Denver partner Brendan Leanos to discuss the firm’s debt finance practice, offering insights from both lender and borrower perspectives. They explore private equity deals, intercreditor arrangements, and the rise of private credit, along with AI’s impact on legal work, strategies for structuring complex financings, and the growth of Reed Smith’s Denver office.

Adam Massaro hosts Global Commercial Disputes partner Joyce Williams to discuss how rhythm, trust, and preparation – core to her equestrian roots – translate seamlessly into her approach to litigation. Joyce reflects on building strong trial themes, guiding witnesses with authenticity, and navigating her path to partnership.

Adam Massaro sits down with Tyler Thompson, a partner in Reed Smith’s Emerging Technologies Group, to discuss how data privacy and artificial intelligence are reshaping the legal landscape. Tyler shares how he built a practice around emerging tech before it took off – and offers insights on how companies can stay ahead of rapid regulatory changes.

Adam Massaro interviews global finance partner Chris Hand to explore his work in debt financing transactions and the emerging world of crypto. Chris discusses how he approaches securitizing digital assets, navigating multi-jurisdictional loans, structuring control agreements, and protecting lender interests. Chris also shares insights from his path to partnership and how he balances the demands of high-level transactional practice with life outside the office. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers.  Adam: Welcome back to the podcast. I've got with me Chris Hand, a partner in the Denver office of Reed Smith, and I am Adam Massaro, also a partner in the newly founded Denver office. Chris, welcome to the pod.  Chris: Thanks, Adam. I'm glad to be here.  Adam: So how long have you been at Reed Smith?  Chris: I joined the firm in February of 2025. We really hit the ground running over here. We were able to bring over quite a few clients in some existing matters. So I really jumped right in with some of our existing Denver clients and then started integrating with some of our Chicago and New York team as well. So it's been only a few months so far, but a really good start.  Adam: What practice group are you in? So I'm in the corporate practice group. Really, I'm a transactional attorney, but I specialize in debt financing transactions.  Adam: And debt financing. Give us the listeners a little more information about that.  Chris: Yeah, it feels like a pretty broad term. You know, more specifically, my practice, I represent capital providers. So that could be large national banks. It could be regional banks, private credit funds or just other private investors. When those capital providers are making secured loans to certain partners. So the debt financing transaction is anytime you have a lender making a loan to another party, that party's going to pay back the loan with interest. And if they fail to pay it back, there's going to be some assets that are acting as collateral security for that loan. That's where I step in.  Adam: You mentioned that you came over with a team. Who else did you come over with to help found the Denver office?  Chris: Yeah, I came over with a really strong team who I've worked with for a while. Jay Spader, specifically, he's the head of the debt financing group here in Denver. Brendon Leanos, another debt financing partner I've worked with for about 18 months now. And Jason Larkin on our team as well, who I've worked with for nearly five years at this point. We all came over together. We each have a practice that is all within the debt financing realm, but a little bit different. And each one of us has a slightly different specialty.  Adam: What's your focus?  Chris: So me specifically, like I said, I represent capital providers, but I think my work really fits into two main buckets. The first would be large, broadly syndicated loan transactions that provide working capital to existing, well-established companies. So just to unpack that a little bit, syndicated loan transaction is typically when you have one large bank acting as an agent that puts together the deal. And then that bank goes out and finds other lenders that want to participate. paid. They come in with a commitment and they all join together to provide some portion of the debt financing to a borrower. I work on those facilities. They usually, like I said, provide working capital, so help a company manage their day-to-day cash needs. And then the other large bucket is acquisition financing. So I'll represent a lot of borrowers, but also private equity sponsors and lenders. Anytime somebody's b

Adam Massaro meets with real estate partner Camille Bacon-Schulte to explore the legal challenges behind billion-dollar data center developments – from land acquisition and utilities to financing, leases, and risk mitigation. They also discuss the founding of Reed Smith’s Denver office, the importance of firm culture, and how to balance a demanding national practice with life outside the office.

In this episode, Reed Smith’s Niyati Ahuja sits down with Dr. Steffen Hindelang, professor of International Investment and Trade Law at Uppsala University in Sweden and executive director of the CELIS Institute. Together, they explore the growing global focus on foreign direct investment screening and why it has become a key element of policymaking in the EU and beyond. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers.  Niyati: Welcome to Reed Smith's Disputes in Perspectives podcast. I'm Niyati Ahuja, senior associate in the New York office of Reed Smith. I work in the international arbitration and global commercial disputes group. I do both commercial and investor arbitration, as well as litigation in New York courts and white-collar investigation matters as well. Today, we are very pleased to welcome Dr. Steffen Hindelang to this podcast. Steffen is a professor of international investment and trade law at Uppsala University in Sweden. He's also the executive director of the CELIS Institute, an independent, non-profit, non-partisan research enterprise dedicated to promoting better regulation of foreign investment in the context of security, public order, and competitiveness. Steffen has advised the EU, European governments, as well as companies on investment tribute regimes, international investment disputes, and international organizations on the reform of the current international investment law regime. As you can tell, he has a very, very interesting background. He has been repeatedly invited by the European Parliament's INTA committee to prepare studies on the development of the EU's common commercial policy. He frequently acts as expert advisor before international tribunals and national courts and has served as an exit arbitrator. I also understand, Steffen, that you are organizing a very interesting boot camp in India next month in August on investment arbitration. I'd love to know more about that before we delve into the more serious topics we're going to discuss today about foreign direct investment screening. So I'd love to know more about this boot camp. Would you just share a few lines about that?  Steffen: Of course. First of all, thanks very much for having me. Delighted to be here and talk about two worlds which come together. And that's also the topic of the boot camp. We are jointly organizing with a leading Indian institution. The idea here is to explore crossroads of investment arbitration and economic security regulation. We are inviting students, public servants, attorneys which want to know more about this emerging topic and of course also issue how two worlds come together and possibly collide and how we can make that coalition as painless as possible.  Niyati: Yeah that sounds wonderful and is it in in Gujarat is that correct?  Steffen: Indeed that's in Gujarat It's going to be hot in a double sense. Temperature is going to be quite intense. But also the topic, I think, if I may say so, it's going to be quite hot. And we are at the forefront here, exploring how investment screening measures and others will trigger or may trigger investment arbitrations.  Niyati: Yeah, sounds very interesting. If you do want to, if anybody wants to know more about the boot camp, please do reach out to Dr. Steffen. Okay, now getting to the basics and the more serious topics, let's begin with the basics. What is foreign direct investment screening and why do you think it has become so central to policymaking in the EU and globally as well?  Steffen: I think originally, or let's say for the last 30 or 40 years, we have seen a hyper-globalization. The world has come or had come tog

Seasoned litigators Brad Funari and Adam Massaro unpack the unique dynamics of nonjury trials, as well as requests for equitable relief and evidentiary hearings held without jurors. Brad and Adam share practical strategies for witness preparation, streamlining trial logistics, and even how to read a judge’s demeanor mid-trial – illustrated through firsthand war stories gleaned from their trial experiences and hard-earned lessons in the courtroom. ----more---- Transcript:  Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers. Brad: Hello, and welcome back to the Reed Smith Disputes in Perspectives podcast. I'm Brad Funari, a litigation partner in the Global Commercial Disputes Group, resident here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. With me is my new partner in our new office in Denver, Colorado, Adam Massaro. We're going to be talking today about a new topic. We're going to be talking about non-jury trials, requests for equitable relief, and evidentiary hearings where we don't have a box full of jurors. We're going to offer some practice pointers, some best practices, and probably tell a few war stories along the way. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to my new partner, Adam, who's going to introduce himself and his practice. Adam: Brad, I appreciate the introduction and allowing me to join today. Very excited. Today, actually, I believe marks right around the four-month anniversary from coming over to the new firm and helping to found the Denver office. We've been nice and busy, two trials already, and it's been really fitting well with, likewise, my national litigation practice, which seems to span states and spectrums across the way. So I'm looking forward to talking with you today. Brad: Great, great. Well, let's kick it off, Adam, and let's start with, I guess, kind of a threshold question, which is you as trial counsel often find yourself in a position where you may have a choice of whether you try the case to a jury or to a judge. When you are given that opportunity, and every case is different, obviously, what factors or what considerations do you give in advising a client about whether you go jury or non-jury? Adam: That's an interesting question. It's certainly something we raise in almost any case unless there's a clear jury waiver situation. Some of the things I think about, number one, are first, who are the main clients and how will they present in front of a jury? That's, to me, one of the biggest factors that I think about. The second factor, I do give some weight to subject matter. However, I've presented complex cases to jurors as well as complex cases to judges. And sometimes the jurors actually get it better, especially high-tech cases in that respect. So subject matter is less important. I think the individuals themselves, I will say if I'm looking at a case with a significant potential damage, that would also give me a real variable on both sides, especially as the plaintiff, I would likely then push towards a jury. Conversely, if I'm the defendant, my desire to be in front of a jury where I'm facing high damages exposure just is oftentimes too great of a risk to force the issue if the other side hasn't demanded a jury. How about you? What do you consider? Brad: Yeah, I think those are all good points. You know, I think credibility of witnesses, that's important. And maybe not even credibility, but just how a witness is going to come across. I know a lot of my cases involve high net worth individuals, very charged in emotional disputes over closely held businesses. Sometimes our witness, though as impassioned as they are, they don't really present well to a jury. So my experience, ju

Tom Webley, partner in London, Steve Cooper, partner in New York, and Ranna Musa, senior associate in Dubai, explore the issues and complexities of cross border disputes. In this introductory session, they discuss the issues around discovery, enforcement and privilege and the different approaches of the England & Wales, New York and UAE legal systems. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers.  Tom: Hello, and welcome back. This is another podcast in our Disputes in Perspective series. And today we're going to be looking at cross-border disputes, including a number of different jurisdictions. As you can all probably imagine, in a firm like Reed Smith, we've got 33 offices over a number of different countries, a sort of global footprint. So these are issues that we tend to see all of the time. It'll be unrealistic to get colleagues to join us from all offices, but we have managed to at least get a nice cross-section, I hope. My name's Tom Webley. I'm in the commercial disputes team in London. I'm delighted to be joined today by Ranna Musa, who's based in UAE, and Steve Cooper from New York. So two very different jurisdictions there. The scale of this topic is rather huge, to be honest. I mean, there's so many different issues that we see in litigation and arbitration involving a number of different jurisdictions, so we can't possibly cover them all in any detail today. What we're planning on doing in this podcast is more of an introduction, a sort of appetizer, if you like, just to flag some of the sort of issues which can arise, things that we see arising all of the time, with a view to then going into a much deeper dive into each of them in subsequent podcasts. So on that basis, I think to start off with, I mean, one issue that certainly tends to crop up quite a lot for us and something that we see which has international elements to it tends to be in relation to documentary discovery or disclosure. And Steve, as we've got you on the line with your U.S. perspective, I mean, I think it's fair to say that a lot of our clients over this side of the pond absolutely balk at the idea of getting involved in U.S. domestic litigation from the discovery point of view, the scale and the scope of it. But apart from that in relation to U.S.-specific disputes, do you ever see more international issues arising in relation to discovery? Yeah. Steve: Yes. Thanks, Tom. We see quite a bit of discovery from foreign disputes in the U.S., and there are a number of reasons for that. I mean, primarily, the U.S. is a notoriously wide-open, broad discovery forum. It permits a wide-ranging document discovery. It permits depositions, which is something that is not always available in other jurisdictions, that it is, of course, pre-trial testimony that is taken down by a court reporter. The whole thinking in the U.S. is to permit as much discovery as possible in order to avoid trials. Let each side know what the other side's information is, and hopefully. One, the case settles, or two, nobody is blindsided at trial. So as a result, we get a lot of requests in connection with foreign proceedings. Primarily, we see it in the 1782 context, that is 28 U.S.C. 1782, which is a very, very useful tool for foreign litigants that permits discovery in the U.S. in connection with foreign actions. We also see enforcement collection of judgment proceedings quite a bit because many defendants have assets in the US and also the discovery rules are quite favorable here when it comes to locating assets. And of course, we see a lot of issues involving the Hague Convention and the New York Convention on the Enforcement of

Niyati Ahuja sits down with Kasturi Venkatesh, currently senior consultant for ethics and compliance at WSP USA, to discuss the complexities of conflicts of interest in professional settings. This episode examines the distinctions between real, potential and apparent conflicts, and how these issues can impact organizational trust and integrity. Listeners will gain actionable strategies for navigating ethical dilemmas and mitigating risks with transparency and fairness. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers.  Niyati: Welcome to Reed Smith's Disputes in Perspective podcast. I'm Niyati Ahuja, a senior associate in the Global Commercial Disputes and International Arbitration Group in New York. I'm dual-qualified in New York and India. My practice involves international arbitration, both commercial and investor state, litigation in New York courts, and some white-collar investigation. Today we have Kasturi Venkatesh with us. Kasturi is currently a senior consultant, ethics and compliance at WSB. Kasturi holds three degrees in law and has worked in compliance across different industries, including technology, civil engineering, immigration, and construction. She specializes in conflicts of interest, third-party risk management, and developing and implementing policies and procedures in-house. She also enjoys creating custom ethics and compliance programs for clients. Welcome, Kasturi. We're very pleased to have you here today.  Kasturi: Hi, Niyati. Thanks so much for inviting me to talk about conflicts. I want to start off by saying that all views are my own. They're not representative of my employer. And I'm doing this in my individual capacity. All examples are hypothetical. Thanks so much for having me again.  Niyati: Thanks, Kasturi. So getting right into it, please tell us more about your role and your background and how this area of law that is ethics and compliance interested you in the first place.  Kasturi: So this is really odd, but I knew I wanted to be a lawyer since eighth grade, right? And I was born in the US and mostly raised in India. And the education system there differs a lot from the US in the sense that you decide your path pretty much by 16, 17, 18. And you could specialize in science, math, or art. I chose science as it gave me the most options. But the back of my mind, I was like, oh, I know I want to do law. So end of 12th grade, my parents were like, what do you want to do? And I said, law. Right now, I hold three degrees in law, mostly focusing on business law. I was the teaching assistant for banking and finance law at a point, taught a few classes there. Now, my very first job out of my first law school was at a technology company. And I worked in the ethics and compliance department. Very green at that point. But the more I worked in it, the more I knew that this was something I could actually look at doing in the future, something really fun. I pivoted into immigration compliance after that, came back to ethics and compliance, and I truly enjoy it. It's like every day is a strategy or a logic puzzle. Where answers aren't black and white, you operate in a lot of gray in any company dealing with ethics and compliance. And there's always so much to learn in the field. I love interacting with people. There's a lot of that in the field. And a very strong community that wants to help.  Niyati: That is excellent. You've had a great career path so far, Kasturi. I'm sure it's going to only grow in the future. I wanted to, for our audience members, I wanted to ask a more basic question. Can you define what a conflict of interest is and explain why it's import

Reed Smith labor and employment partners Cindy Schmitt Minniti, John McDonald and Mark Goldstein discuss significant employment law updates, including the Department of Labor overtime rule being struck down, future expectations for non-compete agreements, anticipated reversals of National Labor Relations Board decisions and key upcoming Supreme Court cases. The partners also provide guidance on what employers should do before the end of Q1 2025. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers.  Cindy: Welcome back to Reed Smith's Disputes in Perspective podcast. Today's discussion will be around some of the key issues that will affect employers in the United States in 2025. My name is Cindy Schmitt Minniti, and I'm the global chair of Reed Smith Labor and Employment Group. I sit in New York office, and I'm joined today by two of my partners. I'll turn it over so they can introduce themselves. John: Hi, this is John McDonald. I'm also a partner at Reed Smith. I work out of the firm's Princeton, New Jersey office principally. Mark: Hi, everyone. Mark Goldstein, a partner in Reed Smith's New York office and also a member of our Labor and Employment Group. Cindy: Thank you both for joining me in this discussion today. The new year always brings an opportunity to review employment practices and HR policies and usually brings a host of new laws, new regulations, and new focus for administration. And this year, I think particularly given the new administration, employers should really be mindful of some significant changes from an employment law perspective. John, what do you think employers should be most aware of? John: Thank you, Cindy. I think one of the key things might be a slight reversal in time and looking forward after we had a very big decision out of the state of Texas, the very end of the year in 2024, which has been important for employers because they were facing another change in law that was supposed to go into effect on January 1st of 2025, which is now put off. So let me cover that briefly. As folks listening to this podcast may be aware, under the Federal Labor Standards Act, employers can pay employees via salary, and if they meet certain job duties and the salary is high enough, employers can treat those individuals as exempt from both overtime and minimum wage requirements. We often refer to the main exemptions, which are the executive, the professional and administrative exemptions, as the white-collar exemptions. Earlier in the year, the current administration through the Department of Labor, had put forth a proposed rule that raised the salary threshold for sex exemptions, first on July 1st, from where it currently sits at $35,568 per year, up to $43,888 a year. And that, again, went into effect on July 1st, even with the pendency of several legal challenges, which I'll get to in a minute. But there was supposed to be yet another increase on January 1st. Of 2025, all the way up to $58,656 a year. In November of this year, the Eastern District of Texas came out with a decision that invalidated this rule, such that even the July 1st raise that most employers had already been dealing with is now no longer the law. And the January 1st employees were expecting to the salary threshold will not go into it. So what that does is it currently means that the salary threshold for paying employees sufficient enough salary to avoid having to pay overtime provided they meet the requisite duties tests remains presently at the 2019 rule level of $35,568 per year. It was expected that these changes and these increases is we're going to sweep millions of additional employees into

Reed Smith’s Niyati Ahuja interviews Eric Ives – Attorney Advisor, International at the U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of the General Counsel’s Commercial Law Development Program – about his global work in advancing Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Eric shares his journey from private practice to public service, discussing the unique challenges of adapting international ADR standards to diverse markets in Central Asia, Pakistan and the MENA. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers.  Niyati: I’m Niyati Ahuja, Senior Associate in the New York office of Reed Smith. I work in the Global Commercial Disputes Group and International Arbitration Group. I'm qualified to practice law in New York and India. I do both investor state and commercial arbitration work, as well as some white-collar investigations and commercial litigation work in the New York Court. Today, we have with us Eric Ives. Eric is an attorney advisor international at the U.S. Department of Commerce's Commercial Law Development Program, where he leads the agency's ADR development work in Central Asia, Pakistan, and MENA, and works bilaterally with Uzbekistan on finance and digital trade law. Prior to joining the CLDP, Mr. Ives was an associate in White & Case’s International Arbitration Group in New York, where he worked on international commercial and investor state arbitrations. He advised corporate and sovereign clients across a range of industries, including insurance, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, and post-M&A disputes under all major institutional rules. Thank you so much, Eric, for joining us today and sharing your career path, what you’ve discovered, because you did make a switch from a big law firm to the government. So I'm very, very interested in what you have to say about all the questions we have for you.  Eric: Niyati, thank you so much for having me. I'll just say briefly at the outset that I'm here solely in my personal capacity and anything that we touch on today is solely my own opinion and doesn't constitute the opinion of the US Department of Commerce or the Commercial Law Development Program as an agency. And it's great to be here on the Reed Smith podcast. Looking forward to our discussion today.  Niyati: Getting right into it, Eric, tell me, could you share a little bit more about your role as an attorney advisor with the Commercial Law Development Program?  Eric: Yes, absolutely. I mean, as much as you can put in a bio, the work at CLDP is far ranging, covers the globe, and it covers pretty much every area of commercial legal development. The agency is about 30 years old. It was founded post-fall of the USSR to sort of create favorable investment environments for post-Soviet states. Now, 30 years on, that work has expanded to, well, around the world and covers pretty much every single area you can think of. In particular, coming from an ADR background, I focus on ADR law development in Central Asia, Pakistan, and MENA. So that's contract enforcement rights, and that sometimes veers into rule of law and access to justice issues as well. Arbitration, mediation, I think we often think of them as commercial topics, but they also touch public rights as well. And so it's actually been quite nice to see ADR in these new circumstances. Aside from alternative dispute resolution, I also cover finance law and digital trade issues in Uzbekistan on a bilateral basis. Central Asia is incredibly interesting to work in. It sits the middle of a lot of different regulatory approaches, and they're really choosing their way forward. So CLDP tries to show them what the American experience ha

In this episode, Ed Mullins and Rebeca Mosquera explore the complexities of section 1782, a powerful tool for obtaining U.S.-based evidence for foreign proceedings. They discuss the various types of evidence that can be requested, the requirements and procedures for filing applications, and how to respond to such discovery orders for the defense. With insights from recent Supreme Court rulings, they analyze the implications for practitioners and offer practical advice on leveraging section 1782 effectively in the evolving legal landscape. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers.  Rebeca: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective. I am Rebeca Mosquera, a senior associate in our New York office specializing in international arbitration and litigation. Joining me is my wonderful colleague, Ed Mullins, a partner in our Miami office. Ed and I have had the pleasure of working together on several international arbitration and cross-border disputes. Today, we're exploring a topic that regularly generates a lot of discussion, Section 1782 of the U.S. Code. So, let's dive right in. Essentially, Section 1782 is a federal statute that allows individuals involved in legal proceedings outside the United States to request assistance from U.S. Courts to obtain evidence located within the U.S. It's like a legal bridge between foreign courts and U.S.-based evidence. I want us to visualize this. So, for example, imagine that you're part of a lawsuit in, say, Brazil or Germany, and you realize that crucial evidence or testimony is sitting with a company or an individual in the U.S. So instead of jumping through international hoops and letter of rogatories, Section 1792 lets you go straight to a U.S. District court to request the evidence. It is a powerful tool that promotes international cooperation and can significantly impact the outcome of foreign disputes. When I say it promotes international cooperation, that was precisely the spirit of this statue when it was created. The U.S. created this statue in the hopes that other countries will replicate similar laws and statutes. But I don't think that's happened. But in any case, now you might be wondering about the type of evidence you can request, what are the elements, or what does your application might have to include. And for that, I would like to turn it over to Ed so he can tell us more about the requirements that we need to meet for a Section 1782 application.  Ed: Thank you. I'd really enjoy talking about 1782 because I think it's a pretty unique statute. I can find out more information about a case before it's even filed for a foreign proceeding than I can domestically. And it's a very powerful tool. You can get not just documents, but you can get deposition testimony as well. And the lawsuit that that issue doesn't even have to be filed yet. So let's talk about the statute itself. I agree with Rebecca that the idea was that we were supposed to be able to get evidence for our cases in the United States in foreign countries that hasn't really worked out. And so there is an imbalance here where you can get more evidence for a foreign proceeding than you can for a case here looking for discovery in a foreign country. So there's different ways to talk about the elements. I think the logical way you see most cases look at it, the elements are an interested person doesn't necessarily have to be a living person. It can be a corporation. The evidence needs to be for use in a foreign proceeding. And the target, often called the target, it has to be found in the district of the 11th Circuit and other circuits. So the fourth element that it has to be, you

There are two new corporate offences under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023: the senior manager offence and the failure to prevent fraud offence. London-based Global Regulatory Enforcement partners Rosanne Kay and Patrick Rappo are joined by London senior associate Emma Shafton to discuss the new offences and their relevance to disputes lawyers. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers.  Rosanne: Welcome back everyone to Disputes in Perspective. My name is Rosanne Kay. I'm a partner in the London office specialising in white-collar crime and I am joined today by two colleagues also from Reed Smith's London office and also specialising in white-collar crime, Patrick Rappo and Emma Shafton. And what we wanted to do briefly today is to talk about the new corporate crime offences, and in particular, explain how they are relevant to disputes and litigation. To start with, though, I'm going to ask Emma to just give us an overview of these new offences and why they're significant.  Emma: Well, there are two new offences under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act of 2023. The first is the senior manager offence and the second is the failure to prevent fraud offence. So dealing with the senior manager offence briefly first, this has been enforced since the 26th of December last year and it introduces criminal liability for companies of any size for a wide range of financial crimes. So that includes things like money laundering, breach of sanctions legislation fraud bribery and a company can be held criminally liable where any of those offenses are committed by its senior managers. Previously corporate liability could only be attributed where the prosecution could show that there was a directing mind and will of a company involved in the offending and as a result historically it's been really difficult for prosecutors to successfully prosecute companies for financial crimes. So that's the first offence, and that's the strict liability offence. And the second, which is not yet in force, is the failure to prevent fraud offence. That will come into force when the UK Home Office publishes guidance. And as of the date of recording, which is the 23rd of September, that guidance hasn't been published yet, but it could come in the next few weeks or the next few months. And what this offence does is introduces criminal liability for large organisations and their subsidiaries where an associate commits fraud. An associate could be an employee, an agent, or somebody that performs services for or on behalf of the organization. So a consultant maybe or an intermediary. And that associate must intend that the fraud benefits the organization or any other person to whom the associate provides services for or on behalf of the organization. So that could be a customer, for example. Now the failure to prevent fraud offence is strict liability offence and it will be made out unless the organisation can show that it has reasonable preventative policies and procedures in place and the guidance that I've referred to will detail what will be expected of companies. The offence will come into force following a brief preparatory period which could be as little as six months and that will be confirmed once the guidance is published. So that's a brief summary of the two offences and really the introduction of them cumulatively represents a seismic shift in the law on corporate criminal liability in the UK and they've both been welcomed by prosecutors such as the Serious Fraud Office. One other point that's very important to note is both of those offences apply extraterritorially so

In the U.S. and UK, issues relating to ESG risks are expanding and evolving rapidly and continually for commercial entities. Organizations have a part to play in promoting good ESG conduct, but this comes with the responsibility of managing potential liability and litigation. In this podcast, Tom Webley, partner in our Global Commercial Disputes Group in London, Mark Goldstein, partner in our Labor and Employment Group in New York, and Mark Pring, partner in our Insurance Recovery Group in London, discuss topical issues relating to ESG risks and steps directors can take to mitigate these risks in both the UK and U.S. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to Disputes and Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes related trends, hot topics and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers. Mark P: Welcome back, everyone, to Disputes in Perspective. My name is Mark Pring and I'm a partner in our global commercial disputes and insurance recovery teams. I'm delighted to be joined by my partners and colleagues, Mark Goldstein, a labor and employment lawyer in our New York office, and Tom Webley, a commercial disputes and regulatory lawyer in our London office with extensive experience, particularly in the financial services sector. In this short podcast, we'll be addressing some topical issues relating to disputes arising out of ESG risks. We think it's fair to say that people have long been aware of the risk of litigation in the ESG context, but we're starting to sense that the litigation landscape and indeed the regulatory landscape is changing in a number of jurisdictions, including the UK and the US in relation to litigation. The focus of attention previously was on class action claims against the likes of polluters and governments directly responsible for environmental damage or impacts on communities, but now there are myriad other risk exposures. Tom, if we can start with you. Do you get the sense that the UK risk landscape is changing? Tom: I do. Mark, I mean, I think it's not just changing, but it's fair to say that in relation to ESG risks and litigation risks, it's probably expanding and expanding quite rapidly and continually. You mentioned that a lot of the previous claims were against what we probably could look at as primary infringes. So for example, anyone who's directly responsible for any pollution or emissions or environmental harm. But that certainly isn't what we are seeing claims limited to now and probably increasingly so, ESG and particularly the E. So if we think about climate change, this is seen as something for which all commercial entities have some sort of responsibility to drive change for the good, to improve their own conduct in their own performance in that sphere. And I think the net result of that is likely to be an increased amount of claims against a much wider range of potential defendants, almost to the point where actually any single commercial entity could be in the firing line. And if we take an example of how this has manifested in practice, you could look at the action that's been taken by organizations like ClientEarth. You may well be aware a lot of people will. That client brought a claim against directors of Shell. Again, that's much more focused on the more primary infringer type claims, but they've also been writing to wider organizations like trustees of pension funds, reminding those trustees that people investing money also have an obligation to the wider community to ensure that the investments drive change in a positive way. So that's an example of the expansion away from the original target for those claims into something completely different. And it's likely not just to be pension funds and the asset managers and people with large amounts of money to inve

Parties have always been encouraged to explore ways to resolve their disputes outside litigation. There has been a significant shift in how litigation is pursued in England and Wales, with the move to integrate alternative dispute resolution (ADR) into the process to help facilitate resolution at the earliest opportunity. In this podcast, Oliver Rawkins, Catherine Lewis and George Pissarro discuss the recent shift in the move to more formally integrate ADR into the proceedings, including the impact of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Churchill v. Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council in 2023 and further recent jurisprudence on ADR issues. ----more---- Transcript:  Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers. Ollie: Welcome to the Disputes in Perspective podcast series. My name is Ollie Rawkins. I'm a partner in Reed Smith's Global Commercial Disputes Group in London. And today I'm joined by two colleagues, Catherine Lewis and George Pissarro, to discuss recent developments in the approach to Alternative Dispute Resolution, or ADR, here in England. So I just wanted to sum up first the ground we're going to cover today. First, we're going to give a brief overview of ADR itself. We're then going to look at one of the most significant decisions in ADR in recent years. This is the Churchill and Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council case from 2023. We're going to look at some procedural changes that are either going to be implemented or in fact have been implemented already. Then we're going to look at a couple of court decisions from 2024 and how they reflect or illustrate the approach to ADR here in England and in English courts. Finally, we're going to look to the future and see what trends or themes in relation to ADR might be on the horizon. So first, I'm going to give a very brief overview of ADR. This is a bit of initial background to those listeners who may be less familiar with ADR as a concept. So it encompasses a variety of methods which were designed to resolve disputes. Without resorting to litigation or where proceedings are already on for bringing that litigation to a consensual resolution. So, just to be clear, we're looking at the types of ADR in play in the context of court proceedings. ADR processes can be binding, meaning that the outcome is final and can be enforced, or alternatively they can be non-binding, which means that the parties can proceed with litigation to resolve the dispute if they're not satisfied with the outcome of the process. Non-binding ADR processes may involve third-party intervention, but do not have to. So the most commonly used methods of ADR include mediation and negotiation, early neutral evaluation and expert determination. The pros and cons of ADR depend to a large extent on the specific mechanism in question and may not apply across the board. However, generally speaking, the benefits are seen to be that it saves time, it saves costs, offers flexibility and choice, confidentiality, and it can help maintain positive business relationships. And even if the ADR process in question doesn't itself result in settlement it might produce or have other benefits for the parties. It might narrow the issues of dispute, test the strengths and weaknesses of each party's case and establishing an ADR process and one that the parties can agree to and then engaging in it can also build or re-establish lines of negotiation or dialogue between the parties and ultimately increased the prospects of settlement being reached before trial. As a general principle, mediation is heavily endorsed and encouraged by the English legal system. However, until recently, the case law indicated t

Brad Funari, Mark Goldstein, and Michelle Mantine discuss the Federal Trade Commission’s recent proposed rule that would ban employers from imposing non-compete agreements on their workers and what that could mean for worker mobility, wages, and the way future compensation agreements are structured.

Over 18 months has now passed since the introduction of a major reform to the process for preparing trial witness statements in the English Business and Property Courts. Counsel Oliver Rawkins and Knowledge Management lawyer Daniel Newbound explore the key themes emerging now that the reforms have been put into practice, such as: compliance levels by litigants; what sanctions the court will impose in practice; challenging defective statements; and the new approach to documentary evidence.

Michael Galibois, Natsayi Mawere, and Ginevra Ventre describe the importance of biometric data and provide an overview of relevant state and federal regulations, including the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. They go on to discuss recent litigation in this ever-evolving space.

Reed Smith’s Michael Galibois, Natsayi Mawere, and Ginevra Ventre discuss the ever-evolving landscape of biometric data, including what biometric data is, how it’s used, the data’s advantages and disadvantages, and trending topics.

Reed Smith represented Channel Rescue in a claim for judicial review of the UK government’s policy to push refugees and other migrants seeking to cross the English Channel in small boats back to France. Reed Smith’s lead lawyers in this case, Michael Skrein, Richard Gunn and Ellie Ruiz outline how the firm used its public and maritime law expertise to bring this important challenge to court, resulting in the government withdrawing the policy.