Bill Shearer is a senior partner and serves as a member of the Board of Partners, the Firm's governing body. He has also served as Chair of the Firm's Business & Finance practice group and Co-Chair of the Firm's International Practice. He has over 30 years of experience representing public and privately traded businesses and their owners, directors, officers and managers in hostile and friendly mergers, acquisitions, financings and corporate governance matters. Mr. Shearer also has a business perspective that comes from serving on corporate boards and from owning, operating and selling several businesses.

Mr. Shearer has been involved in numerous transactions totaling more than $40 billion in transaction value. These have included acquisitions in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, South America, Europe and Russia involving, among others, Gannett, Minnesota Mining & Minerals, Groupa Televisa, Havas (a subsidiary of Vivendi), CBS, Infinity Broadcasting, Viacom, Infinity Outdoor, Lamar Outdoor Advertising, Eller Media (a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications), Del Webb Corporation, Party City Corporation, Disney, Auto Nation, Fisher Communications, Cincinnati Bell, CIBC, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Banc Paribas, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse First Boston.

Mr. Shearer has also served as the outside general counsel for Outdoor Systems, Inc., a NYSE company having a $7 billion plus market cap, and is currently serving as the outside general counsel for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim major league baseball team. He is Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Georgia, representing the Seed Capital Fund, which was created to allow the state to provide investment capital to emerging businesses.

Mr. Shearer has served as a panel member on the annual White House Conference on Consumer Awareness and the Regulation of the Financial Services Industry. He has also served as a consulting editor for Research Institute of America, the Tax Management publication division of the Bureau of National Affairs, Prentice-Hall and the Institute of Business Planning. He has conducted numerous continuing education courses for the American Bar Association, the Georgia Bar Association, the Georgia Society of CPAs and a wide variety of professional and business organizations.

Mr. Shearer has also been recognized by Atlanta Magazine as a 2008 Georgia Superlawyer.