RPC appoints Reshma Raja as its first General Counsel

The move reflects RPC's ambitious growth strategy coupled with the increasingly complex regulatory landscape

Reshma is the sixth Partner to have joined RPC in 2022, in addition to promoting 10 new Partners at the beginning of May across its four offices

International law firm RPC has hired Reshma Raja as the firm's first General Counsel. She will start at RPC at the beginning of July.

Reshma joins RPC from Dentons, where she most recently held the position of Deputy General Counsel at Dentons UK and Middle East for the last four years. In that role, Reshma led on a broad range of risk and compliance issues across the business as well as sat on the firm's Global Risk Management Committee.

Previously, Reshma spent 14 years at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin (MAB). At MAB, she practised as a senior banking litigator, switching roles to become Head of Professional Standards and COLP as a Partner in 2008.

As General Counsel, Reshma will be part of the firm's Partnership, and have accountability for and oversight of risk and compliance across the firm. Within her role she will advise the Managing Partner and Partnership Executive team about the legal and regulatory implications of the firm's major decisions, strategies and transactions. She will sit on the Partnership Executive Committee and act as a key adviser on issues of firm governance, growth, special projects and practice management.

Commenting on Reshma's arrival, RPC's Managing Partner James Miller said: "We are delighted to welcome Reshma at RPC. As a rapidly growing professional services firm with ambitious growth plans for the future, and an increasingly complex regulatory landscape, we have decided to broaden the remit with the hiring for a General Counsel."

RPC's Chief Operating Officer Alistair Johnson added: "As a highly experienced and commercially minded lawyer with broad experiences of the challenges professional firms and their clients face, I have no doubt she will be help us deliver against our ambitious growth strategy.

"I look forward to working with Reshma as we continue to grow and exploit opportunities presented to the firm, its people and its clients."

Reshma said: "I very much look forward to joining RPC. It is an exciting time to join the firm as its first General Counsel as the firm embarks on its bold growth strategy and at a time where the regulatory demands on the profession continue to grow.

“I am thrilled to be taking on this role at a firm which has an excellent reputation in the market, an enviable portfolio of clients and some of the largest and most complex contentious and non-contentious matters. Above all, I am pleased to be doing this at a firm that values its people and where workplace culture is paramount. 

"RPC is a rapidly growing professional services firm and I am looking forward to working with its brilliant, people-focused, collaborative and commercially minded risk and compliance team."

The hire comes shortly after the firm hired five new Partners (Shai Wade, Tania Williams, Mike Newham, Rathi Thiagamoorthy and Peter Kwon) across its Commercial and Insurance Group, as well as promoting ten new Partners to the Partnership in May. RPC now has 125 Partners across the firm.