Sherr Law Group

Focus and practice areas

Four fields carry most of the work here: municipal law, employment law, insurance defense, and products liability. The firm handles both litigation and counseling within them. It works in local, state, and federal courts across eastern and middle Pennsylvania.

The client list runs toward institutions and their people. Municipalities, elected officials, police and emergency personnel, camp owners, insurance companies, and businesses both public and private all appear on it. Individuals are represented too.

That mix has a logic to it. Municipal defense and insurance defense draw on overlapping skills: both involve a paying institution, a claim brought by a private party, and a court asked to decide whether the institution's conduct crossed a legal line.

Municipal work and civil rights defense

Sherr Law Group names several matters involving police conduct. Karchnak v. Swatara Township appears on the site, as do matters concerning Officer Greenly and the York Area Regional Police, and a Honey Brook matter. The firm also cites ACRE litigation, which in Pennsylvania concerns the Agricultural Communities and Rural Environment law and the disputes it creates between townships and farm operations.

Civil rights claims against a municipality usually arrive under 42 U.S.C. 1983 in federal court. The defense turns on questions a jury may never reach: whether the individual officer has qualified immunity, and whether the municipality itself had a policy or custom that caused the harm. Those questions get argued on summary judgment, often on a record built from body camera footage, dispatch logs, and training files.

Municipal defense work also means answering to more than one audience. A township supervisor board, an insurance carrier, and the officer named personally may each have a stake in how a case resolves. In my opinion, a firm that has done this work for a while tends to be fluent in that particular arrangement, and the case names on this site suggest the firm has.

Advisory and publication work

Anthony R. Sherr contributed a chapter on modern policing to the PSATS Municipal Solicitors' Handbook. PSATS is the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, and its handbook goes to the lawyers who advise townships. He also presents for PSATS and gives Continuing Legal Education sessions.

Writing for a solicitors' handbook is a different exercise from arguing a case. It requires stating a rule clearly enough that another lawyer can apply it to facts you'll never see. That kind of output is checkable, which matters to a directory built on evidence.

Employment matters on the defense side

The firm defends businesses and government employers in discrimination cases. The site names age, disability, national origin, and race discrimination, along with sexual harassment claims.

Most of these claims travel a fixed route before anyone files suit. A charge goes to the EEOC or the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, the agency notifies the employer, and the employer files a position statement. The agency may investigate, attempt conciliation, or issue a right to sue letter. Employer counsel is typically involved from the charge stage onward, because what the employer says in that first written response can follow the case into court.

Government employers add a layer. A public employee may hold procedural rights a private employee lacks, and a discrimination claim can arrive alongside a due process or First Amendment claim. Handling both municipal and employment defense under one roof fits that overlap.

How the team is built

Anthony R. Sherr is the Managing Partner. He worked at the United States Department of Justice before entering private practice, and he has published and presented on municipal topics.

Julie Owsik Ackerman is an attorney with the firm. She represents municipalities and businesses in Pennsylvania litigation, covering employment disputes, municipal litigation, and appellate work in federal court. Federal appellate practice is worth noting on its own: it means briefing to the Third Circuit, where the record is closed and the argument is about legal error.

Stefanie Sherr worked with Anthony Sherr on the defense of Manheim Borough and the York Area Regional Police in matters decided in 2024. Lisa Ondich is listed as Of Counsel. Charlene Healy appears on the attorneys page as well.

This is a small group. For institutional defense work, that has practical effects: the lawyer a township solicitor talks to on the phone is usually the lawyer who will stand up at the hearing, and files move between people who already know the client's history.

What the record shows

The firm says it has served clients since 1957. That figure sits on the home page and is the firm's own statement about its history. As a reviewer, I treat a stated year like that as a claim about continuity rather than a verified corporate founding date, since the site names no LLC, P.C., or LLP entity.

The named cases are the more useful evidence. Karchnak v. Swatara Township, the York Area Regional Police matter, Manheim Borough, Honey Brook: these are identifiable matters with identifiable parties, and a prospective client can look them up. Directories fill with unverifiable superlatives. Case names are checkable.

The 2024 dates on the Manheim Borough and York Area Regional Police matters also tell a reader that the litigation practice is current. Firm websites sometimes carry results a decade old with nothing since. Here the most recent named outcomes are recent.

Where the firm works

The office is in Norristown, blocks from the Montgomery County Courthouse. The firm names clients in communities including Ardmore, Bala Cynwyd, Collegeville, Conshohocken, King of Prussia, Philadelphia, and Scranton. Scranton is a considerable distance from Norristown, which fits the firm's statement that it appears in courts across eastern and middle Pennsylvania.

Proximity to a county courthouse matters more in municipal and insurance defense than in some other fields. Much of the work is procedural appearances, status conferences, and argument on motions, and those happen in person.

Who this listing suits

A township facing a civil rights suit, a borough needing a solicitor's opinion on police policy, an employer served with a PHRC charge, or an insurer defending a premises liability claim: these are the situations the firm's own pages describe.

The insurance defense practice covers products liability, premises liability, and medical malpractice. Products liability appears twice, both as a standalone practice area and inside the insurance defense scope, which suggests the firm takes it from carriers and from manufacturers directly.

The firm also lists crisis management services. For a municipality, that generally means the period after an incident when a public body must respond publicly while litigation exposure is still unclear, and legal advice runs alongside communications decisions.

Sherr Law Group publishes an attorneys page with named lawyers, a practice page describing four fields, and case names attached to real courts. In my opinion, that is a reasonable amount of checkable material for a firm of this size.