The team at Sher Edling are disruptors. Though the California-based environmental law firm only opened its doors in 2016, founders Vic Sher and Matt Edling have been taking on some of the most contentious fights against the biggest polluters for decades. They’ve innovated the practice area, from landmark groundwater contamination cases to defining and leading the emerging field of climate deception litigation against oil and gas companies. In the latter, centering around what Sher calls the companies’ decades-long “campaign of deception,” the cases have caught the eye – and ire – of the fossil fuel industry’s political and corporate allies.
They embrace the challenge. The lawyers are, Sher says, “joyful warriors” for their clients and enthusiastic collaborators with public counsel – with a firm-defining mission to “protect people and the planet.”
Over the years, Sher and Edling have built a team that will fight those battles with them for the next decade and beyond. They sought out lawyers who “share that drive, ambition and vision,” Edling says. They found all those qualities in powerhouse litigators Stephanie Biehl and Katie Jones, who were promoted to partner in 2022, Ashley Campbell, who was made partner in 2024 and Quentin Karpilow, who was promoted to partner in 2026.
“Like all of our attorneys, our partners go out of their way to make sure clients are not just adequately represented, but extraordinarily represented.”
-Matt EdlingA decade in, those representations are delivering real results. Sher Edling’s clients have realized more than one billion dollars in relief thanks to the firm’s hard-fought environmental litigation. In 2025 alone, water utilities represented by the firm were awarded more than $400M in historic settlements with the 3M Company, DuPont and others as part of the national In re: Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Litigation (the “AFFF MDL”), which concerns a firefighting foam containing PFAS. The litigation is one of the largest contamination MDLs in the country.
Excerpted from original publication by Lawdragon, April 13, 2026
