Colleen Davies heads Reed Smith’s 750-lawyer litigation department and maintains a busy practice, so she doesn’t have time to make sure each practice group leader has an up-to-the-minute accounting of how busy their lawyers are. But Richard Jones does.

Crowned the firm’s first-ever chief of litigation department operations in January, Jones takes care of the day-to-day financial and administrative operations of the department and serves as a self-described “chief of staff” to Davies.