About

Steve Reynolds is highly distinguished in the US in-house legal market having been named the global general counsel of two Fortune 200 companies in his career. Prior to taking his current role in 2012, Reynolds was senior vice president and general counsel of Alcatel-Lucent from 2006, having assumed the role of general counsel after the merger of Alcatel and Lucent, the latter of which he joined in 2005. One professional highlight from his time at the global telecommunications company is successfully resolving a series of significant FCPA investigations that he inherited when Lucent merged with Alcatel. Now as executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of Aramark, a leading provider of services related to food, facilities and uniforms, Reynolds has continued to display his credentials having recently managed two highly strategic $1bn plus acquisitions in separate industries for Aramark, AmeriPride and Avendra. These were announced on the same day in 2017 and he successfully obtained HSR early terminations on each from the Federal Trade Commission. Reynolds also receives praise for his contribution to an ongoing significant case in the DC Court of Claims against Delaware North. Senior leaders at both his current and previous employers are impressed by Reynolds’ management skills. In addition to his core legal abilities as at both Alcatel-Lucent and Aramark, he dramatically reduced the legal department’s cost structure, creating innovative approaches to outsourcing services and capping overall internal and external spend in the process. At each company, Reynolds reduced legal spend by over 30%, without compromising the quality of legal services. ‘How has that affected the wider company? In each case, the companies benefited from significantly reduced SG&A spend, which allowed more direct investment in the businesses’, Reynolds states. He had the following to share on recent changes in the legal industry: ‘I have been struck by the impact of technology on the in-house legal function. Having spent several years in the technology industry, specifically as general counsel of Bell Laboratories (which was part of Lucent and then Alcatel-Lucent after the 2006 merger) I had a unique opportunity to see what was coming with respect to the use of devices and consumer based applications. However, I must confess that I have been overwhelmed by the speed of adoption and the manner in which technological advances have changed how we work, how we research, how we communicate with courts, how we manage our contracts and, most importantly, how we interact as lawyers. So many of these innovations have been good for the practice, but not all of them’.