Headquarters |
599 Lexington Avenue, New York City, United States |
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No. of offices | 18 |
No. of attorneys | 850 |
Major practice areas | General practice |
Key people | Creighton Condon (senior partner) |
Revenue | US$820.5 million (2013) |
Profit per equity partner | US$1.8 million (2013) |
Date founded | 1873 (New York City) |
Company type | Limited liability partnership |
Slogan | Global reach and a world of experience |
Website | |
www.shearman.com |
Shearman & Sterling LLP is a multinational law firm headquartered in New York City, United States. It is organized as a single, integrated partnership with approximately 850 lawyers in many of the commercial centers of the world. The firm's lawyers practice US, English, EU, French, German, Italian and Hong Kong law.
Shearman & Sterling was founded in New York City in 1873 and is considered a part of the group of elite American "white shoe" law firms.
Shearman & Sterling was founded in 1873 by Thomas Shearman and John William Sterling, who concentrated on litigation and transactional matters respectively. The young firm represented financier Jay Gould and industrialist Henry Ford, and cultivated a number of important business ties that would evolve into long-standing client relationships, such as with the Rockefeller family and the predecessor banks to Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.
The firm experienced international expansion in the post-World War II era under the direction of Boykin C. Wright, a senior partner who joined the firm from Cahill Gordon & Reindel with a group of lawyers, briefly leading the firm to add his name to the letterhead. The firm's first international office was established in Paris in 1963.
In postwar Germany, Shearman & Sterling helped German companies such as Siemens and BASF restructure their debts and re-emerge as credible exporters to the United States. The firm's lawyers assisted Daimler in its listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 1993, the first such listing by a German company, prompting other major companies to follow suit. The firm then represented the German automaker in its purchase and subsequent sale of Chrysler.
The firm is well known for its ability to compete in key legal markets, particularly in Germany where its mergers and acquisitions practice is preeminent and in the United Kingdom, where it fields one of the largest London offices of a non-UK law firm.