Reed Smith announced that the firm and its client, Brookfield Property Development (BPD), will be honored together by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) as 2025 ACC Value Champions.
Reed Smith and BPD will be honored by ACC for an innovative solution for streamlining BPD’s due diligence screening process for vetting vendor conflicts on a global scale.
The Reed Smith project team was led by Entertainment & Media partner Jason Gordon and Robert Newman, global chair of the firm’s Emerging Technologies practice. They collaborated with an in-house client team led by Andrew Lim, BPD’s senior director of legal counsel.
As highlighted by ACC in an announcement today, BPD “needed an efficient, scalable solution to manage high‐volume vendor due diligence, which required extensive background checks for compliance.”
“Reed Smith customized its existing AI‐driven conflicts and risk assessment platform to streamline the process, creating a bespoke portal for automated screenings and real time tracking,” ACC said. “The result was a reduction in vendor review times from days to hours, a 48% cost reduction, and an estimated $750,000 in savings.”
The solution is among eight innovations from inside counsel and their external partners that ACC will honor this year, “for their transformative approach to increasing their legal departments’ efficiencies and cost savings.”
Winners will be featured at the ACC Legal Ops Con 2025 in Chicago, April 9-11. Gordon and Lim will present the conflicts solution on April 9 at the Opening Plenary, titled: “Unlock the Secret(s) to Success – Take Your Legal Operations Function to New Heights.”
Previously, this due diligence tool was “Highly Commended” at the FT North American Innovation Lawyer Awards 2024 and shortlisted for Best Regulatory, Governance and Compliance Technology at the upcoming Legalweek Leaders in Tech Law Awards 2025 (final winners to be announced on March 24).
Original source can be found here.