Founded in 2016 by Nicholas Bortman, Joana Rego and Andrew Wordsworth, Raedas is celebrating its fifth anniversary.
The past 18 months have been challenging for businesses around the world, and no less so for the investigations sector. But we remained true to our objectives and continued to expand.
“We started Raedas with the single purpose of bringing an exclusive focus on disputes related investigations to clients’ contentious situations. Seeing the value of this approach to our clients has been highly rewarding,” Andrew says.
Looking back to 2016, there have been significant changes for Raedas. Starting as a team of three we increased our permanent staff to 25 experts speaking 17 languages, bringing on board nine new hires over the past 12 months. We bolstered our Latin America practice in response to client requirements and increased demand for litigation support coming out of the region.
“Latin America is as varied as it is complex and has occupied a central stage in the disputes landscape of the last decade. Our decision to strengthen our team with high calibre regional specialists continues to pay off not just in how we respond to clients’ but also in creating opportunities to work with local corporates, law firms and the growing third-party funding community in the region,” says Joana, who heads our LATAM practice.
In celebration of our fifth year, Raedas launched an internship programme for graduates and young professionals seeking expertise in the investigations sector. Since the launch we have welcomed ten interns across our Russia, LATAM and MENA practices. The programme’s success can be directly attributed to our Band 1 Chambers ranking which has attracted quality candidates, supported by the steady growth of in-house experts who coach the interns throughout their seat.
While stability and staff well-being has been a priority during the Covid-19 pandemic, we cannot run on autopilot. We continue to evaluate the evolving requirements of our clients and adjust our offering accordingly.
As part of this assessment, Raedas instructed legal research firm Acritas in late 2020 to interview leading litigators and arbitration practitioners from across the globe. We wanted to understand if and how investigators are meeting their needs and where they see emerging applications of their expertise. The findings were reviewed by the Raedas Board and a firm-wide action plan has been implemented in response.
“It is extremely gratifying to learn that a specialist approach, such as our own, is highly valued by clients,” says Elizabeth Anscombe, Head of Marketing and Business Development. “It is vital to work with clients to consider how the investigations sector should evolve, in order to continually support their needs. The feedback has been invaluable and incorporated into our strategy”.
With an eye on the next five years and beyond, “our priorities will be to continue to deliver sector leading litigation support, but also to form new partnerships to expand our service offering and innovate,” says Nicholas.
We continue to support FIND, a non-profit company launched in 2020 that carries out financial investigations for civil society organisations. Nicholas Bortman is a director of FIND and members of the team are encouraged to commit time to FIND matters on a pro bono basis.
“We are enormously grateful to the incredible pool of talented staff and to the clients who have accompanied Raedas on its five-year journey,” said Andrew.
To discuss any details from this article please get in touch via enquiries@raedas.com