Firm Profiles

If there is any firm that makes law seem like a glamour job, it’s Los Angeles’s Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton. The firm has a widely known entertainment practice (largely based out of its Century City office) that represents major studios, media companies, television networks, and production companies in all manner of financing, licensing, and new media deals. Then there is the firm’s video game team. No, these lawyers don’t play Halo all day, but they do advise on the intellectual property, employment, licensing, and litigation issues that game companies have.

Of course, there is the more traditional work, too, and Sheppard has done plenty of it, tweaking its practice over the years to capitalize on emerging trends and growing markets. First there were the banks and retailers who formed the core of the firm’s client base in the decades after its 1927 founding. Then, in the 1990s, came an increased focus on aerospace and defense (Northrop Grumman Corporation is a client) and real estate.

More recently, the focus has been on expanding the firm’s footprint on a global scale. For years, Sheppard was mainly known as a California firm (it has eight offices within that state). In 2003 it branched out to the East Coast, opening offices in Washington, D.C., and in New York, and in 2007 it took its biggest—and furthest—step, with an outpost in Shanghai. Doubling down on its bet on global markets, Sheppard launched additional offices in Beijing, Brussels, and London in 2011. In Beijing the focus is on guiding clients on M&A and investment opportunities. In London, cross–border transactions constitute a big chunk of the office’s assignments.

While Sheppard suffered some layoffs during the financial crisis, morale among lawyers has traditionally been good. The firm ranked thirty–eighth of 137 firms on The American Lawyer’s 2010 Midlevel Associates Survey, and forty–third of 126 firms in 2011. Sheppard is not one of the most diverse law firms in the country, ranking seventy–ninth of 194 firms on our 2011 survey of the Am Law 200 firms (just 7 percent of U.S.–based partners are minorities). But with its Hollywood connections and video game transactions, it certainly has one of the more diverse practices.

—Updated as of 1/1/12