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At Sheppard Mullin, worker advantages embody…
Labor & Employment
At Sheppard Mullin, worker advantages embody assist with duties like discovering look after growing older mother and father
By Anna Stolley Persky
August 4, 2025, 9:34 am CDT
It’s a standard theme—legislation agency employees and attorneys juggling caregiving tasks of their private lives with their careers. However Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton says it has discovered a approach to assist. (Photograph from Shutterstock)
DeAnna Ouderkirk, chief administrative officer at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, has been fielding household emergencies with out-of-town kinfolk 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 accustomed to the world and didn’t know tips on how to discover and vet nursing look after her sister or a house for her sister’s canine.
“It was an emotionally powerful time, and we had been scrambling,” says Ouderkirk, including that her sister handed away. “I’m very, very busy in my job and attempting to steadiness every thing. It was overwhelming.”
It’s a standard theme—legislation agency employees and attorneys juggling caregiving tasks of their private lives with their careers. However Sheppard Mullin says it has discovered a approach to assist. Since January 2024, the agency has supplied Homethrive, a service offering concierge-like help for caregivers, as considered one of its advantages.
The service offers a 24/7 digital platform and licensed scientific social employees to assist coordinate care points as they arrive up, from researching and presenting dwelling well being care choices for an worker’s growing older father or mother to serving to an worker advocate for an individualized schooling plan for a neurodiverse youngster.
Ouderkirk has used the service a number of occasions. 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 in a position to share it with different kinfolk. That they had 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 comprehend that I had this useful resource,” she says.
Blair Whitman, vp of consumer success at Homethrive, says the corporate operates nationwide and is increasing into Canada. In line with her, they serve over 30,000 legislation agency workers and work with different companies apart from Sheppard Mullin.
Homethrive’s focus is on serving to caregivers who are sometimes “toggling between guiding their mother and father and elevating youngsters,” Whitman says.
The enterprise employs greater than 100 social employees and different employees; all work remotely. Moreover serving to legislation agency workers discover particular providers, the social employees are skilled to have a look at every state of affairs “holistically,” typically guiding people into caregiving help teams or serving to them achieve a greater understanding of their family members’ sicknesses and particular wants.
Legislation companies profit from the service as a result of their workers are higher in a position to focus throughout work hours when a service they belief handles the analysis and legwork wanted to navigate complicated caregiving, Whitman says.
Legislation companies 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 shouldn’t be solely humane, but in addition pragmatic, she provides.
“There’s solely a lot we are able to deal with, and it is very important assist workers handle their tasks and stress,” says Goshtasbi, chair of the ABA Legislation Apply Division’s Legal professional Effectively-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 technology” after serving to discover assets for a accomplice who lived on the West Coast however was scrambling to look after a father or mother who lived on the East Coast.
“I assumed, ‘There needs to be some form of resolution the agency might provide to offer folks assets,’” he says.
Adrian searched for various advantages to assist caregivers and located that Homethrive’s method was distinctive and the correct 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 focus on what it pays to supply it. Agency workers have used the service at the least 240 occasions prior to now yr and a half, and the suggestions has been optimistic, he says.
Andrius Kontrimas is a accomplice within the Houston workplace of Sheppard Mullin. He relied on Homethrive when he was searching for methods to help his aged mother and father in Southern California by researching care amenities, dwelling well being care choices and transportation providers.
“Legal professionals have busy schedules, and when you’re 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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