Reed Smith’s decision to partner with civil rights attorney S. Lee Merritt in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia on behalf of Ahmaud Arbery’s mother last month is only part of a Racial Equity Action Plan the firm developed in response to the social unease of 2020.

One after another, the killings of Black men and women by white police officers—or people acting as police officers—stunned, grieved and outraged the country.