CLASS OF 1995 Distinguished Alum 2024 Stephen Shackelford

Stephen Shackelford graduated in 1995, but Prep has stayed with him ever since. Yes, he is grateful for the excellent education he got here, which prepared him well for college and life. But he also met his wife, Stefanie, at Prep; they started dating after going on a post-graduation trip to England with teaching legend Diann Arinder.

Stephen grew up the son of a plaintiff’s lawyer and remembers trips with his dad, Steve, to union halls in neighboring states to visit with folks who needed legal help. He was probably always going to be a lawyer, but after finishing college at Harvard, Stephen spent two years trying to be an entrepreneur. He was wildly unsuccessful in those efforts, so he returned to Harvard, this time for law school. After graduating first in his class, he clerked for two years, including one for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Stephen then went to work at Susman Godfrey, a firm that does a lot of plaintiff’s-side contingent fee work. He has been at Susman Godfrey since 2007, except for a three-year break when he left to work as Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the General Electric Company, back when GE was one of the biggest companies in the world.

Stephen’s career highlight so far at Susman Godfrey was serving as co-lead counsel for Dominion Voting Systems in its lawsuits against various individuals and media companies that spread lies in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. In what would have been a high point, Stephen was getting ready to give the opening statement in Dominion’s highly-anticipated trial against Fox News in April 2023, when moments before he was set to begin, Fox agreed to pay Dominion the record sum of $787.5 million to settle the case. Stephen looks forward to delivering an opening statement in one or more of the other six Dominion cases still pending.