Litigation
Jun. 15, 2002
Up To Her Eyeballs
Top 30 Women Litigators - Nancy Sher Cohen - Representing big business in insurance and mass tort litigation, Nancy Sher Cohen is up to her eyeballs in work.
Nancy Sher Cohen
Representing big business in insurance and mass tort litigation, Nancy Sher Cohen is up to her eyeballs in work.
But don't feel sorry for Cohen. She doesn't.
"I worry when I don't have anything to do, not when I have too much," Cohen of Los Angeles' Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe says.
As lead counsel for the lender that issued insurance policies covering the World Trade Center, she's managing cases that recently required four-to-10 depositions a day.
"[Sometimes] you don't want to wake up," Cohen, 50, jokes. "[But] you just go with it."
A different case finds her on the other side, fighting an insurer in a $500 business interruption claim brought by British Petroleum against Lloyd's of London. The suit stems from a pipeline explosion in Washington that interfered with a refinery's ability to deliver gas.
What she enjoys most about the practice of law is debating the gray areas between the black-letter law.
"Reasonable minds may differ," she says.
Cohen also knows when to take off the gloves.
"I tend to be naturally aggressive," she says.
Early on in her career, that attitude didn't sit well with her mostly male peers.
"It was harder for us to succeed because we had to walk a fine line," she says.
Cohen overcame the odds.
In 1998, the alumni association of her alma mater, Loyola Law School, chose her as its trial attorney of the year. She's a former managing partner of her firm's Los Angeles office. She serves on the board of Bet Tzedek and the California Women's Law Center.
For the Record Because of a reporting error, a story published in Verdicts & Settlements on June 14, 2002 misstated Nancy Sher Cohen's clientele. Nancy Sher Cohen exclusively represents policyholders, not insurers. She represents the lender involved in the World Trade Center litigation.
Eron Yehuda
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