Lawdragon published an October feature highlighting the career of Vic Sher, who was also named to Lawdragon’s 2026 Green 500 list of Leading Environmental Lawyers and as a 2026 inductee into the Lawdragon Hall of Fame. Lawdragon describes the Hall of Fame as a “treasure trove of lawyers who have stood the test of time. By which we mean, they have advocated, advised, argued and analyzed on behalf of their clients, changing laws, lives, countries and commerce for, typically, at least 40 years. They don’t let a setback or bad year get in their way. They get on with it.”
The feature is excerpted below, and can be read in full on the Lawdragon website.
When looking at the history of modern environmental law, one name comes up again and again: Victor “Vic” Sher.
Since the 1980s, Sher has leveraged his legal expertise to tackle some of the biggest threats to the environment and to champion communities impacted by those threats. Along the way, he has taken on some of the world’s most powerful corporations – and biggest law firms – and won.
He has led groundbreaking forest protection lawsuits. He was a member of the trial team in the first MTBE water contamination case to go to trial, utilizing an innovative products liability law strategy. And, in the last decade, his firm has represented states, tribes, and local governments suing fossil fuel giants, alleging that the companies have known for decades their products led to harmful effects on the environment and failed to either mitigate those harms or warn consumers about them. The lawsuits claim that this “campaign of deception” led to climate-change-induced harms that place enormous financial burdens on the communities impacted by them.
While Sher has pioneered these approaches in court, he doesn’t think of them as outside-the-box.
“I don’t view our work as being steeped in novelty. Our cases are firmly based in traditional elements,” says Sher. “We simply apply established legal principals to new factual circumstances.”
Ten years in, Sher says that his current firm is the best team of lawyers he’s yet assembled in his legal career.
“We are proud to have secured more than $1B in relief for our clients so far,” says Sher. “But we have our work cut out for us as we enter our second decade at Sher Edling. Corporate power and influence are increasing, at the very time that traditional safeguards for the environment, public health, and community resilience are being dismantled. It’s our job as mission-driven lawyers to help reset that imbalance in our communities. We are ready for that fight.”
