Gregory D. Sheehan

Background

Sheehan's documented background begins with his undergraduate education at Harvard College, which he attended from 1973 to 1977 and completed with a degree in government and economics. Harvard College, the undergraduate college of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was founded in 1636 and is among the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States.

His legal training continued on the West Coast at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied at the law school from 1977 to 1980. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1980, the same year he completed his law degree, and he began his legal career in federal court in Massachusetts.

Education

Sheehan completed his Bachelor of Arts at Harvard College, graduating magna cum laude in government and economics in 1977. He was a recipient of John Harvard Scholarships and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the honor society founded at the College of William & Mary in 1776 that is the oldest collegiate honor society in the United States.

He then entered the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, a professional school within the University of California system that is commonly known as Boalt Hall. There he served as Executive Editor of the California Law Review, the student-edited journal of the law school, and was recognized with membership in the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for law students with high academic standing. He received his Juris Doctor in 1980.

Career

Sheehan's first post after law school was as a law clerk to Judge Walter Jay Skinner of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, a position he held from 1980 to 1981. That court is one of the federal trial courts created by the Judiciary Act of 1789, and the clerkship placed him in the federal judicial system at the start of his career. In 1981 he was admitted to practice in California, having already been admitted in Massachusetts the previous year.

In September 1981 he joined Ropes & Gray, the Boston law firm founded in 1865 by John Codman Ropes and John Chipman Gray, both Harvard Law School graduates. The firm's early practice centered on individual clients and Harvard University, and it moved toward corporate law in the late nineteenth century as its business clients grew. Sheehan rose to partner at the firm and remained there for almost four decades.

At Ropes & Gray he practiced in the investment management area, advising investment companies, their boards, investment advisers, hedge funds, and private fund sponsors on business and regulatory matters. He also assisted clients with corporate transactions, including acquisitions, deal structuring, and employment and equity incentive arrangements. He chaired the firm's investment management group from the early 2000s until 2009, and he served on the firm's Policy Committee from 2009 to 2019. Investment management law concerns the regulation of pooled funds such as mutual funds and the responsibilities of their boards, an area reshaped in 2001 by SEC reforms that required fund boards to have independent directors and independent legal counsel.

Sheehan retired from Ropes & Gray in December 2020. In the second semester of the 2021–22 academic year he was an adjunct professor at Boston College Law School, a Jesuit-affiliated law school established in 1929, where he designed and presented a new course on asset management law. He was also named an Access to Justice Fellow, through which he was to partner with the International Senior Lawyers Project, an organization that provides pro bono legal assistance to governments and civil society groups in the Global South and in countries moving toward democracy and market-based economies.

Membership

BoardIQ is a publication for mutual fund boards that reports on news and trends from the trustee's perspective. Sheehan served on its advisory board from 2008 to 2017, a role that connected him with a publication whose readers include mutual fund directors and trustees.

• Member of the advisory board

  BoardIQ , United States

  2008 - 2017

Interests

• Sheehan is documented as speaking French.

References

• Gregory D. Sheehan, Ropes & Gray biography The firm's biography of Sheehan, listing his Harvard College and University of California, Berkeley School of Law degrees, his 1980 Massachusetts admission, his 1980 to 1981 clerkship with Judge Walter Jay Skinner, and his status as a retired partner.
• Greg Sheehan, Lawyers Clearinghouse A profile describing Sheehan's retirement as a partner at Ropes & Gray in December 2020, his investment management practice, his Independent Legal Counsel of the Year Award, his BoardIQ advisory board service, and his Access to Justice Fellowship with the International Senior Lawyers Project.