Labor & Employment
At Sheppard Mullin, worker advantages embody assist with duties like discovering take care of ageing mother and father
August 4, 2025, 9:34 am CDT
It’s a standard theme—legislation agency employees and attorneys juggling caregiving obligations of their private lives with their careers. However Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton says it has discovered a manner to assist. (Photograph from Shutterstock)
DeAnna Ouderkirk, chief administrative officer at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, has been fielding household emergencies with out-of-town relations over the previous few years.
When her sister was hospitalized two years in the past in Browns Summit, North Carolina, Ouderkirk, who lives in one other state, struggled to assist. However she wasn’t aware of the world and didn’t know easy methods to discover and vet nursing take care of her sister or a house for her sister’s canine.
“It was an emotionally robust time, and we have been scrambling,” says Ouderkirk, including that her sister handed away. “I’m very, very busy in my job and attempting to stability every thing. It was overwhelming.”
It’s a standard theme—legislation agency employees and attorneys juggling caregiving obligations of their private lives with their careers. However Sheppard Mullin says it has discovered a manner to assist. Since January 2024, the agency has provided Homethrive, a service offering concierge-like help for caregivers, as certainly one of its advantages.
The service supplies a 24/7 digital platform and licensed medical social staff to assist coordinate care points as they arrive up, from researching and presenting dwelling well being care choices for an worker’s ageing guardian to serving to an worker advocate for an individualized training plan for a neurodiverse little one.
Ouderkirk has used the service a number of instances. Lower than a yr in the past, her mother-in-law had a stroke. Ouderkirk arrange a Homethrive account for the state of affairs and was capable of share it with different relations. They’d the primary dialog with the social employee assigned to them whereas within the visiting room on the hospital. The social employee researched and vetted nursing care choices and meal supply providers—and finally, hospice care—for Ouderkirk’s mother-in-law.
DeAnna Ouderkirk is the chief administrative officer at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton. (Photograph by Doug Peck)
“It was so good to understand that I had this useful resource,” she says.
Blair Whitman, vice chairman of consumer success at Homethrive, says the corporate operates nationwide and is increasing into Canada. In accordance with her, they serve over 30,000 legislation agency workers and work with different corporations moreover Sheppard Mullin.
Homethrive’s focus is on serving to caregivers who are sometimes “toggling between guiding their mother and father and elevating kids,” Whitman says.
The enterprise employs greater than 100 social staff and different employees; all work remotely. Moreover serving to legislation agency workers discover particular providers, the social staff are skilled to have a look at every state of affairs “holistically,” usually guiding people into caregiving help teams or serving to them achieve a greater understanding of their family members’ sicknesses and particular wants.
Legislation corporations profit from the service as a result of their workers are higher capable of focus throughout work hours when a service they belief handles the analysis and legwork wanted to navigate advanced caregiving, Whitman says.
Legislation corporations are more and more discovering methods to encourage the emotional wellness of their workers, says Katy Goshtasbi, the CEO of Puris Consulting. She says her firm helps legislation agency leaders with management teaching and coaching, advertising and marketing, and worker well-being and productiveness.
Offering a service to ease the burden of caregiving is just not solely humane, but additionally pragmatic, she provides.
“There’s solely a lot we are able to give attention to, and you will need to assist workers handle their obligations and stress,” says Goshtasbi, chair of the ABA Legislation Follow Division’s Lawyer Properly-Being Committee.
‘Eliminates the guesswork’
Thomas Adrian, senior director of human assets for Sheppard Mullin, says he began on a quest to assist the “sandwich era” after serving to discover assets for a companion who lived on the West Coast however was scrambling to take care of a guardian who lived on the East Coast.
“I believed, ‘There must be some sort of answer the agency may provide to present individuals assets,’” he says.
Adrian searched for various advantages to assist caregivers and located that Homethrive’s strategy was distinctive and the best match for Sheppard Mullin’s 2,100-plus workers all through the U.S. and overseas.
Staff don’t pay for the service, and Sheppard Mullin wouldn’t talk about what it pays to supply it. Agency workers have used the service no less than 240 instances up to now yr and a half, and the suggestions has been optimistic, he says.
Andrius Kontrimas is a companion within the Houston workplace of Sheppard Mullin. He relied on Homethrive when he was in search of methods to help his aged mother and father in Southern California by researching care amenities, dwelling well being care choices and transportation providers.
“Attorneys have busy schedules, and if you end up coping with household, none of us are skilled to know what the alternatives are or who the suppliers are,” he says. Homethrive “eliminates all of the guesswork.”
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