Over 130 years ago, Thomas Shearman and John William Sterling founded a law firm that specialized in litigation and transactional matters. Among the firm’s earliest clients were financier Jay Gould, industrialist Henry Ford, and the Rockefeller family. Some of these clients have established long-standing relationships with the firm, like the Rockefellers and the predecessors of Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.

Since its inception in 1873, Shearman & Sterling has provided insightful legal advice to its clients. The firm’s major areas of practice include antitrust, mergers and acquisitions, international arbitration, environmental, private client, and criminal law, regulation and enforcement.

Shearman & Sterling’s over 1,000 lawyers follow a set of values that help them provide exceptional legal services. Their main focus is the clients’ interest so that each lawyer is dedicated to developing a keen understanding of the clients’ business before coming up with excellent, innovative and highly ethical solutions and suggestions. Shearman & Sterling’s lawyers also put a heavy emphasis on teamwork with the belief that doing so will help them work more cohesively and therefore, more effectively.

The firm acknowledges that diversity affects the way their lawyers look at life and how they do business. For Shearman & Sterling, diversity is a tool for developing the quality of one’s work and for conducting business on a global perspective. The firm’s professionals come from different backgrounds, cultures, races, sexual orientations, generations, and ethnicity.

At the core of the firm’s global mission is their pro bono advocacy. Shearman & Sterling believes that pro bono work is an integral aspect of a lawyer’s practice. Since the firm works on a global scale, their lawyers are qualified to address pro bono matters worldwide.

The firm’s full time Pro Bono Attorney and her diligent staff are the ones responsible for matching Shearman & Sterling’s lawyers with various nonprofit organizations and individual clients that the firm represents on a pro bono basis.

Shearman & Sterling’s pro bono commitment has given the firm wide recognition. Aside from being one of the New York-based firms who provided assistance to 9/11 victims, Shearman& Sterling is also associated with the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda and Break the Cycle, a group that provides assistance and helps young people escape abusive relationships. As part of its commitment to Rwanda’s criminal tribunal, some of the firm’s attorneys regularly spend weeks in Arusha, Tanzania.

As of 2007, Shearman & Sterling’s revenue was estimated at $921 million. The New York-headquartered firm’s managing partners are Robert C. Treuhold and Georg F. Thoma.

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