Harrison Sheppard is a lawyer, author, and public speaker who received a classical education and B.A. from St John's College, Annapolis, MD (1961) and a Juris Doctor from Hastings College of Law, University of California, San Francisco (1967). He is the Principal of Harrison Sheppard Law & Conflict Resolution, a solo law practice in San Francisco founded in 1990. A Member of the California State Bar, Mr. Sheppard is also admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California and the U.S. Supreme Court.
In addition to talks given to audiences throughout the U.S. and internationally, his legal and political essays have appeared in scholarly journals and mass media including, among many others, The Washington Post and The New York Review of Books. He is the author of Too Much For Our Own Good: The Consumertis Epidemic (2006) which predicted the mortgage and credit crises, and What’s Right with Lawyers/What’s Wrong with Lawyers (2003).
His writings explain how law schools cost the American economy billions of dollars annually in unnecessary litigation by preparing students to fail as problem-solvers through exclusive study of litigated cases. He advocates a major shift in legal education toward teaching the practical skills needed to help law students become effective counselors, negotiators, and peacemakers -- and litigators only as a last resort. Mr. Sheppard was honored by the California State Senate in 1996 following publication of his Opinion Editorial in The Washington Post titled “Cashing in on Conflict” for his “devotion to the ideal of the democratic rule of law...as an instrument of justice tempered with compassion.”
His presentation will be a talk on the core principles of conflict resolution and how typical contemporary legal education and practice, by unnecessarily turning problems into lawsuits, burdens the economy and adds to the cost of health care.