Sherman speaks on lawyering, Spotlight investigation

Ambassador Robert Sherman
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Attorney Robert A. Sherman, U.S. ambassador to Portugal from 2014 to 2017, spoke to students, staff, and faculty at the University of Massachusetts Law School today about his experience as a lawyer and diplomat.

Sherman's work experience spans criminal and civil practice, as well as politics and diplomacy. In a tort vein, from 2002 to 2004, Sherman was lead counsel for plaintiffs in sex abuse claims against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Those were among the cases investigated by the Boston Globe "Spotlight" team, whose work was dramatized in the 2015 feature film, Spotlight.

Early in the wave of sex-abuse litigation against the church, Sherman said, plaintiff attorneys faced daunting hurdles, such as statutes of limitations and charitable immunity for the church in state law. Another problem was simply identifying victims. Many victims self-blamed, and a powerful stigma attached to the first persons who came forward. 

As is problematically common in American tort litigation, secrecy in negotiated dispute resolution and non-disclosure agreements in settlements prevented the public from knowing who the perpetrators were and from understanding the scope of the wrongs. The same conditions impeded the Spotlight investigation.

Sherman said that he's spoken publicly only recently about his connection to Globe editor Walter V. Robinson and the Spotlight team. Because of his work on the cases, Sherman said, he knew more than the public, and more than the Spotlight team, about the magnitude of the problem. And he knew who the perpetrators were. Yet bound by attorney-client confidentiality, Sherman said, he could not speak freely. He wrestled with his ethical responsibilities, he said.

Occasionally, Sherman met Robinson on a park bench—like in a spy thriller. Robinson wanted names. Sherman couldn't give them. But Robinson might say, for example, "Our sources tell us to look into Father Shanley." Sherman would respond, "I've heard of Father Shanley." That was all Robinson needed to hear to know that his lead was good.

Sherman and his law firm resolved 385 of 525 victim claims against the church in arbitration, he said.

Law school and working as an attorney well prepared Sherman to be an ambassador, he said, because the job of ambassador boils down to resolving conflicts, if between nations rather than between people.