Vic Sher

When Vic co-founded Sher Edling in 2016, he brought with him four decades of exceptional success—as a litigator, a consultant, and as the leader of the world’s largest public interest environmental law firm. Over his career he has developed and prosecuted unparalleled legal strategies to protect people and the planet, taking on some of the world’s most powerful polluters and largest law firms along the way.

Vic built and leads Sher Edling’s Climate Practice. He has argued on behalf of public entities in courtrooms across the country to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their deceptions about climate change. His successful argument before the Supreme Court of Hawai‘i established City & County of Honolulu et al. v. Sunoco LP et al. as the first tort-based climate deception case in history to prevail on motions dismiss all the way up to and through a state supreme court.

Sher Edling’s robust docket of cases to address water contamination is also informed and guided, in part, by Vic’s previous work to hold major industries accountable for contamination of public water supplies, including the oil industry for contamination by the gasoline additive MTBE, agricultural chemical manufacturers for contamination by DBCP and TCP, and others. Vic’s successes relied on a then-novel product liability theory to hold manufacturers of toxic chemicals accountable for impacts on public drinking water systems they knew would occur but failed to disclose or warn about.

In 2003, Vic was appointed lead outside counsel by the New Hampshire Attorney General in the first statewide case to sue ExxonMobil and others over MTBE contamination; Vic led the pretrial proceedings, and the case recovered more than $350 million from the defendants. In 2009, he was lead trial counsel in City of New York v. ExxonMobil Corp., a case over MTBE contamination in Queens that resulted in a total recovery of $125 million, including a verdict against ExxonMobil alone of $104.7 million. His team was recognized as a Public Justice Trial Lawyer of the Year finalist. In a federal multidistrict litigation, In re: MTBE Products Liability Litigation, involving hundreds of public water providers around the country, the court designated Vic national co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs, and he recovered more than $100 million for his clients.

Vic practiced with the public interest law firm Earthjustice (then known as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) from October 1986 until June 1997, including as its President from 1994 to 1997. As President, he acted as the CEO for the world’s largest public interest environmental law firm. The American Lawyer called some of his work during this period among the “most important public lands management litigation in this country’s history.” The ABA Journal noted that Vic’s lawsuits forced “an end to business as usual.” He also litigated many cases to protect communities from toxic chemicals, preserve endangered ecosystems and species, conserve public lands and improve air and water quality.

Lawdragon Magazine named Vic a Top 500 Lawyer in the U.S. in 2012, 2024, and 2025, to the 2026 Lawdragon Hall of Fame, and to the 2026 Lawdragon 500 Leading Environmental Lawyers – the Green 500. He has been recognized as a Northern California Super Lawyer since 2005, received a Pew Scholarship in Conservation and the Environment in 1992, and shared the Natural Resources Council of America Award of Achievement for Policy Activities in 1993. The American Lawyer Magazine named him to its 1997 “Public Sector 45,” a list of “45 young lawyers outside the private sector whose vision and commitment are changing lives.”