Janet Schmidt Sherman, 1941-2022

Janet Sherman, who drew on her former career as a sociologist to build a criminal defense practice in Santa Monica and become a nationally recognized expert on civil and criminal asset forfeiture, has died. She was 80.

Sherman suffered from dementia for the past five years, and died Dec. 11, according to her husband, Fred Friedman, a former partner at Jones Day and the boutique O’Neill & Sun.

“Janet had great credibility with prosecutors and judges and the esteem and respect of the criminal defense bar,” Friedman said. “She represented hundreds of clients over the years and obtained favorable — often extremely favorable — dispositions for so many of them.

Sherman practiced law for 35 years with Victor Sherman, to whom she was married for a time. She was a cerebral counterweight to Victor, who acknowledges he can be fiercely competitive. Where Victor talked of waging and winning courtroom battles, she talked of helping people and holding the powerful accountable.

Their shared commitment to doing what was best for their clients enabled them to practice together successfully long after they divorced.

“I’ve never met anybody as smart, and nobody can tolerate me like she can,” Victor Sherman told the Daily Journal in 2003.

In an interview Monday, Victor Sherman said Janet Sherman was a terrific writer who was able to bring clarity to complex arguments.

“She would follow me around the office and I would babble and she would make a coherent statement out of what it was I was trying to say,” he said.

“She was brilliant,” he continued, noting that she was litigating forfeiture cases long before Congress passed the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act.

Richard G. Hirsch, who practiced with the Shermans, called Janet “a gentle, decent, good person.”

“She had a good sense of how to structure cases so that her clients were put in the best possible light and if they had issues in their background Janet knew how to bring that out in a mitigating way,” Hirsch said.

She co-wrote a book with renowned criminologist Sheila Balkan called “Crime and Deviance in America: A Critical Approach,” that Hirsch said he continues to recommend.

Janet Sherman was born in Chicago to Jules and Grace Meyers. The family moved to Los Angeles when Janet and her sister, Laurie, were children. Janet graduated from Fairfax High School and then entered UCLA, receiving a bachelor’s degree in education. She decided to pursue a career in sociology and obtained master’s and doctorate degrees in sociology from UCLA, graduating with her Ph.D. in 1976.

She taught sociology and criminology courses at San Diego State University for the next several years. She was one of the first women granted tenure at the university.

After a boyfriend was charged with a marijuana offense in the early 1970s, Sherman developed an interest in the law. She took law courses at night, while continuing to teach during the day, all while raising her daughter as a single mother. She obtained her law degree in 1980.

She served on the Indigent Defense Panel for the federal court in Los Angeles. She acquired a national reputation and was invited to join the American Board of Criminal Lawyers — one of the first women to achieve that honor.

Away from court, she spent a lot of time in Aspen, Colorado, skiing in the winter and hiking and enjoying the music festival there in summer.

Janet Sherman is survived by her husband of 31 years, Fred Friedman; her sister and brother-in-law, Laurie and Hank Abramson; her daughter and son-in-law, Heidi and Brian Emberling; grandchildren Geordie Emberling and Sarah Emberling.

Funeral services were held on Dec. 14. Donations in Janet Sherman’s memory may be made to the Lewy Body Dementia Association (lbda.org).