Shephard & Shephard is the oldest continuous family operated law firm in Parramatta. The firm has a long and proud history in the Parramatta area and continues to maintain the integrity and quality of service upon which the firm was built. An office in Parramatta was opened in 1908 and an office at our current site in George Street Parramatta opened in 1921. It has since seen four generations of the Shephard family.
Henry Walter Shephard
Shephard and Shephard was founded in 1908 by Henry ‘Hank’ Walter Shephard. Born in 1880 in South Australia, Henry Walter Shephard was one of the foundation members of the Parramatta Rotary Club of which he was also Charter President. He was also closely involved in numerous organisations including the Parramatta Golf Club, Cancer Research, P.L.C. Croydon and was an honorary Solicitor for the Parramatta Hospital.
He attended Sydney Boys High and in 1898 became a Law Clerk articled to Henry Davis, Solicitor in Sydney ‘in the Colony of New South Wales’. In 1908 he opened an office in Parramatta and a room in Liverpool. Following the death of his mother four years later, Henry Walter Shephard gave up the Liverpool room and ran, in addition to the Parramatta office, another office in Sydney, as well as entering into a partnership in what became known as the law firm ‘Greenwell, Shephard & York’. The firm later divided with Henry Walter Shephard continuing the Parramatta office on his own.
He retired from Shephard & Shephard in 1959 and died in 1968, aged 87.
Henry Wilson Shephard
Born in 1913, Henry ‘Mick’ Wilson Shephard attended the Kings School, Parramatta and later obtained his Law degree from Sydney University in 1940.
In 1941 he enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy Reserve where he was Lieutenant on secondment to the Royal Navy, taking a major part in the D Day landing. While in England in 1942 he met and married Ruth Lydia Simms in London and had their first daughter, Anne, the following year. After returning to Australia, he resumed practice at Shephard & Shephard in 1946. He and Ruth had two more children, Michael, born in 1947 and Jill in 1951.
Henry Wilson Shephard served as President of the local Law Society in the 1960s and was equally as respected as his father in the community. He was a District Governor of Rotary International and Chairman of the Committee responsible for the State Sports Centre for the Disabled at Mount Druitt. He was also closely involved as Honorary Solicitor to numerous organizations such as Hills District Scout Association, Parramatta RSL and the Hills District Agricultural Society.
Henry Wilson Shephard retired from Shephard & Shephard in 1991, aged 77, making him then Parramatta’s longest serving legal practitioner. He died in 1996.
