Reed Smith

Case Study: The Modern Legal Experience Engine

A Composable Digital Platform for Reed Smith

Client: Reed Smith, a global Am Law 40 firm
Sector: Legal services
Our Scope: Technology strategy, backend engineering, complex integrations
Design Collaboration: Living Group, Brand & Experience Design Lead
Launch Date: December 2025

Novicell partnered with global law firm Reed Smith to architect and deliver a next-generation digital platform aligned with the firm’s elite market position. As the technical foundation and integration partner, we led the strategy, architecture and implementation of a composable ecosystem designed for long-term evolution, performance and governance.

• Mobile pages load in 1.3 seconds (a 91% improvement over the previous platform)
• 100% accessibility compliance (WCAG 2.1 AA)
• Zero blocking delays for instant interactivity
• Unified data flow across HRIS, website and experience systems

The Mandate

As client expectations accelerated and competitors invested in digital capability, Reed Smith’s leadership recognised a clear risk: the firm’s digital presence no longer reflected its market position or supported how modern legal buyers assess expertise and insight.

The Am Law 40 firm set out to rebuild its digital ecosystem as a next-generation platform reflecting core business priorities and evolving B2B buyer expectations. The goal was to re-architect site structure, elevate industry value propositions and deliver a user experience that showcases capabilities with clarity and intent.

To support strategic growth, the platform needed to strengthen search and unify institutional insight under one governed environment. That meant enabling buyers to find expertise quickly, improving accessibility and leveraging rich multimedia to match modern consumption habits.

The build also required SEO discipline, sales enablement features and a scalable architecture. From integrated case studies to seamless conversion points, the website now supports visibility and business development by providing a single, intuitive destination for the firm’s thought leadership, insights and services.

• Slow experience: Mobile page load times approached 15 seconds, which is unacceptable for C-suite buyers, general counsel and business leaders making rapid decisions where speed and confidence matter
• Fragmented search: Search results appeared as one undifferentiated list, forcing users to scroll extensively and leading to expertise discovery failures
• Manual data management: Siloed systems forced marketing teams to re-key lawyer and event information, pulling efforts away from higher-value work
• Rigid architecture: A monolithic platform restricted innovation, required major rebuilds to adopt new technology and increased time to market for critical updates

To deliver on its brand promise, the firm needed a faster, more intelligent and more unified platform. It had to be engineered to evolve continuously with its business and the markets it serves.

What composable enabled in practice

1. Zero-friction performance: A redesigned foundation removed legacy drag, ensuring response times that keep pace with business needs. Enterspeed pre-processed content to reduce latency. Netlify distributed the final experience to users’ browsers, and Cloudinary managed media assets efficiently. Together, these elements help the platform maintain its performance as content and scale grow. Performance optimisation ensures that load times no longer interrupt client journeys or decision-making.

Outcome: Mobile load time dropped from 14.8 seconds to 1.3 seconds, representing a 91% improvement.

2. Curated search: The site search delivers precise discovery across thousands of lawyers, services and insights, while governance rules maintain editorial intent. Powered by Algolia, the experience provides speed and relevance with strategic control over how results are presented.

Outcome: Users find relevant expertise instantly, and the firm retains control over how results are shaped, increasing confidence that buyers are seeing the firm’s most relevant capabilities.

3. Unified insights: Content previously distributed across third-party blogs is now consolidated into one centralised hub, giving clients a full view of the firm’s insights. Legacy insights from Passle and WordPress were migrated, transformed and connected via APIs, ensuring that institutional knowledge lives within one governed environment.

Outcome: Consolidation strengthens institutional authority and reinforces the firm’s standing as a market-leading adviser.

4. Continuous data integrity: Bidirectional data flows keep biographies and content accurate across systems. We migrated, enriched and aligned bio data from the previous CMS to the new UX while the HR integration is completed.

Outcome: Marketing and other business services teams gain efficiency, while clients see accurate, up-to-date information across the site.

5. Security by design: For enterprise clients and general counsel, security is not optional; it is a procurement requirement. Security was built into the platform from the start, reducing exposure rather than relying on controls added after deployment. A composable approach, combined with static site generation (SSG), limits public access to core systems.

Outcome: Independently verified A+ security ratings validate that the firm meets enterprise security standards, supporting client due diligence and building confidence with risk and procurement teams.

6. Content Migration: The migration from Sitecore followed a proven strategy designed to minimise business disruption and maintain market-facing presence. We applied an 80/20 approach using automated tools for 80% of the content and refining the remaining 20% of the flagship and high-impact content. This ensured the new platform’s enhanced capabilities were fully utilised rather than limited by legacy templates. The process enabled a short, controlled content freeze and allowed editorial teams to complete final preparation without interruption.

Outcome: We completed migration with minimal downtime and no disruption to editorial workflows, protecting the client experience and internal productivity during a critical transition.

7. Future-Ready Content Foundation: Content is structured around flexible models rather than fixed templates, ensuring it can evolve as business needs change. The composable architecture allows content to be reused across channels, expanded to support new services and use cases, and integrated with future systems without requiring large-scale rework.

Outcome: A long-lasting, adaptable content platform that protects investment and reduces future replatforming costs.

8. Managed Infrastructure: Fully managed infrastructure and continuous monitoring ensure stability, performance and security at all times. With proactive maintenance, updates and 24/7 support, we take full responsibility for the operation of the platform, removing the need for internal teams to manage or maintain infrastructure.

Outcome: A highly reliable, resilient platform with reduced operational risk, enabling the firm to treat its digital presence as a protected business asset rather than an operational burden.

9. Integrated Content: Previously siloed systems required marketing teams to manually maintain duplicate entries, creating inefficiencies and increasing the risk of inaccuracy. By connecting core systems through a composable architecture, all content is now managed once and reused wherever it is needed.

Outcome: Reduced operational effort frees marketing teams to focus on creating original, high-impact content that strengthens market presence.

Bottom line

For Reed Smith, composable was not a technical preference. It was a modernisation strategy that equips the platform with the agility, precision and structural intelligence demanded in today’s legal market.

Agency collaboration

As part of the Reed Smith website launch, we worked alongside the global brand and digital agency Living Group.

Living Group led the brand and experience design for the website and, through that work, developed the refreshed visual identity adopted by the firm. We ensured that the new visual identity could be executed at scale on a composable platform supported by modern architecture and system integration.