Show Notes

In this episode of Celebrating Justice, Michael Cohan from Cohan Law Firm takes listeners through his remarkable journey from working at a high-profile firm on the 75th floor of the Empire State Building to launching his own personal injury practice in New York City.

He discusses the challenges he faced when starting out, working from Starbucks with nothing more than a laptop and determination. Michael shares how his competitive spirit and commitment to helping those often overlooked in the system have driven his success. He explains his frustration with inefficiencies in the legal system and his efforts to innovate through technology and client communication.

In his “Closing Argument,” Michael passionately addresses the stigma surrounding personal injury lawyers, calling for a renewed sense of responsibility, integrity, and client care in the profession. He reminds his peers that clients are not case numbers but people whose lives depend on their dedication.

Key Takeaways:

Chapters

1:33 – Why did you want to become a trial lawyer?
3:24 – What makes you unique?
7:45 – A Case that Matters
10:18 – Closing Argument

Takeaways

Building a law firm from scratch requires perseverance, creativity, and a willingness to start small.
“Bad cases” can become life-changing victories when approached with dedication and the right mindset.
Strong client communication can set a firm apart and create a better client experience.
The legal industry must adopt new technology to improve efficiency and client service.
Lawyers should remember that their clients are people, not files, and should treat them with the care they deserve.

Transcript

[Theme Song Plays]

Michael Cohan: I’ve generally been a very argumentative person. Those, you see all those, those were bad cases too. This personal injury field is just littered with trash. I’m sorry to say it, but people that are on social media, throwing their settlement checks around, and like making memes and jokes about people faking injuries, and I think it’s horrible.

Narrator: Welcome to Celebrating Justice, presented by The Trial Lawyers Journal and CloudLex, the next-gen legal cloud platform built exclusively for personal injury law. Get inspired by the nation’s top trial lawyers and share in the stories that shape our pursuit of justice. Follow the podcast and join our community at triallawyersjournal.com. Now here’s your host, editor of TLJ and VP of marketing at CloudLex, Chad Sands.

Chad Sands: Hello friends, and welcome back to Celebrating Justice, the podcast that shares true stories from the nation’s top trial lawyers. In this episode, we’re speaking with Michael Cohan, based in New York City. After leaving the firm he was at on the 75th floor of the Empire State Building, Michael bootstrapped his way from drinking iced coffees at Starbucks to building a successful personal injury firm in the city that never sleeps.
To get to the stories, I asked him, Why did you want to become a lawyer?

Michael Cohan: I’ve generally been a very argumentative person. I like arguing with people. I think that’s my nature. I’m also extremely competitive. I always have been. As a child, playing sports, I’ve been competitive. As I got older, doing video games with cousins and friends, I was competitive.
In college and law school, I was very competitive with grades. And as I grew older, I also noticed that there’s a lot of inequalities in the world. You walk around the city right here and you walk by these big skyscrapers and tall buildings and all this money, and at the bottom, at the foot of the building, there’s homeless people sleeping on the street.

And I felt compelled, as a competitive person, to seek equality for the people who are sleeping at the bottom of the building. If you use that as a metaphor for my career, I’ve taken a lot of cases that other lawyers wouldn’t take. My goal and my vision for my firm is to take cases that are the easiest, that other lawyers may not have wanted, and turn them into a life-changing settlement for our clients.

Chad Sands: Did you want to go to law school straight out of college, and did you know you wanted to be on the plaintiff’s side?

Michael Cohan: I always knew I wanted to go to law school, straight out of college. And I did go straight out of college. I worked at a large law firm doing mass tort and asbestos for five years. I hit my cap there, to the point where they were never going to make me partner. And they weren’t going to give me my fair share for cases that I had referred there. So I opened up my own practice eight years ago, almost to the day.

Chad Sands: What was it like leaving the firm—a steady income, steady job—to go hang your own shingle?

Michael Cohan: It was a system and a process that was building up over time.
I knew I was growing, I knew I was learning fast, and I knew I was capable of running my own business. And once I received word that I wouldn’t become partner at that other firm, I basically began my exit process. So if I had new clients coming to me personally, I would sign them up with my new law firm name.
I had the whole thing scheduled and set up so that when I left, I could hit the ground running. Now, that doesn’t make it any easier. When you leave the comfort of a nice salary, an office in the corner of the 75th floor of the Empire State Building, you’re not getting that back right away. And it took years of hard work and dedication to get back to that point. So there were definitely some nerve-wracking times leaving a big law firm and a comfortable position, but I’m happy now that I am where I am.

Chad Sands: Tell me about the early days when you started your own law firm. Did you go out and rent a big office and buy a whole bunch of computers and a copy machine?

Michael Cohan: Quite the opposite. In fact, there was a Starbucks on 28th Street close to my apartment, and I would go to Starbucks every day with my laptop and buy an iced coffee and hope to stay there for as long as possible. One day the manager approached me and said, Hey, you can’t sit here all day with one iced coffee.

So I told him, Okay, I’ll buy a second iced coffee in the afternoons. So my rent was two iced coffees a day sitting at Starbucks with my laptop. I was eventually lucky enough to convince a paralegal to come with me and open up shop. He would join me, and I would buy him two iced coffees a day in the summer, and we would sit in a Starbucks with our laptops, and we just bootstrapped.
We made all our systems digital—Ring Central, DocuSign to sign up new clients—so that we would avoid clients coming into the office. We would just get in as many cases as we could until we got to the point where some settlement checks came in, and I was able to get a virtual office space. So those days were really a grind. I’ll never forget them, and I appreciate them. I’m better for it.

Chad Sands: There are a lot of personal injury attorneys in New York City. How do you separate yourself?

Michael Cohan: I get very frustrated with the inefficiencies in the system, and I think my staff sees that, and my clients see that—that I just think that things could be done in a better way. It doesn’t always have to be the way that it was.
The number one complaint that I get to the Bar Association against attorneys is that they don’t call them back. I find no reason for that. I think that client communication is probably the most important part of what I do. And it makes people and clients feel more comfortable.

So I’ve built a platform and a system for my staff to make sure that there are enough touchpoints with the client throughout their case process so that they feel comfortable. In fact, with our firm, it’s the opposite. We call our clients so much that they don’t call us back. So we’ve kind of flipped the narrative there, and I think that makes us unique. I think that clients appreciate us for it, and it’s ultimately led to our success.

Chad Sands: You touched on the inefficiencies and how you’re frustrated. Can you talk a little bit about that frustration? Is it with just the whole machine?

Michael Cohan: Yeah, definitely. The court system is one. I think that this industry has not adapted to technology as well as other industries have. And I think that technology could really alleviate a lot of the time that it takes to process and ultimately litigate a case.

There are some lawyers that, you know, they still have physical file folders, and you call them, and you hear them going to the corner, pulling up the file folder and telling you about your case. I think that’s an absolute joke. I mean, any other industry—you look around at tech, you look at, I mean, take an iPhone. You walk into an Apple store to buy an iPhone, look at that store, look how aesthetically pleasing it is. Take Apple Pay, you pay for your iPhone, and you walk out.

Why can’t the legal industry be like that? Why can’t we provide customer service to our clients the same way that other industries do? If anything, our clients deserve it more because they’re going through stress. They’re going through something tough that’s life-changing.

Chad Sands: Speaking of clients who are going through life-changing experiences, I know it’s hard to choose one, but could you share a story about a case that had a significant impact on you?

Michael Cohan: Yeah, I mean, there have been so many, especially doing what we do and working with clients who’ve been through trauma. But there’s one that stands out. About a month after I opened my own practice, I got a call from a client whose cousin was in a car accident. She was a young girl, under the age of 16. I believe she was 14 at the time.

She was in the crosswalk in the rain, and a car didn’t see her, hit her, sent her flying, and she suffered a very serious traumatic brain injury. At the time, I had just opened my own practice, so finances were a main issue, and my goal was to get in as many clients as possible. I went to the hospital at Cohen’s Children’s Hospital out in Long Island, which is one of the best, and I met with the family. I saw the client, the teenage girl, sitting in the bed.

And she was totally unconscious. Her face, her body, everything was deformed from the accident, and her family’s crying. And I’m thinking to myself, Am I capable of helping these people? I’m working out of a Starbucks with a laptop. Am I really the person that this family needs right now?

And throughout the process, I watched her heal. I went to the hospital for her visits. I accompanied her and her family to doctor’s visits. And throughout that process, I learned very quickly that as a personal injury attorney, you’re also a psychologist. You’re a semi-doctor. You play all these different roles in the client’s life, and your goal ultimately is to make them whole—not only financially, but physically.

Eventually, she recovered. She ended up going to college, and I think she lives a normal life now. I’ve been in touch with the mother and the family, but just the image of her laying in the hospital bed and her family crying and me being that savior that kind of walks in and says, Look, I’m going to help you guys out, has really stuck with me, and I’ll never forget it. I use that imagery now when I’m dealing with my clients.

Chad Sands: You said you kind of questioned yourself, like if you were the right person or if you were in the right position in your career to take that on. How did you prove to yourself that you were the right person, and how did you carry that forward with you for the rest of your career?

Michael Cohan: Yeah. I mean, I was dealing with a little bit of imposter syndrome. I think anybody that’s opened a business or has tried to attain large goals or is ambitious has dealt with that, and I was certainly dealing with that. And the way I overcame it was just kind of sticking to my principles.

I’m going to work hard no matter what. I’m going to fight for this family no matter what. I’m going to handle their case efficiently. I’m going to get this case to a lawsuit. I’m going to get a deposition. I’m going to get a trial date as fast as I could.
And ultimately, because I stuck to my guiding principles, we were able to get her a favorable result in the case. But even more than that, I was able to navigate them through this young girl’s healing process and this family’s healing process and coming to life for her.

Narrator: At CloudLex, we understand the challenges personal injury law firms face every day. That’s why we’ve built the legal cloud platform to help you stay productive and keep your cases moving forward. CloudLex provides a comprehensive suite of applications and features to support every stage of intake, pre-litigation, trial, and more.

From innovative case management to insightful analytics and HIPAA-secure client communication, CloudLex empowers your firm with the technology to thrive. Build your firm of the future and see for yourself.

Now, here is this episode’s “Closing Argument.”

Michael Cohan: There’s one moment that stands out to me. I’ll never forget it. So the law firm that I worked at—again, it was a big law firm—we had floors 74 and 75 in the Empire State Building. If you walk through the lobby of the law firm, you would see newspaper clips and plaques of all the large settlement awards and victories that the partners had won.

I was on the 75th floor, and the main partners were on the 74th. So they had this audio system where they could call you out and tell you to come down to their office. So I’d be sitting on the 75th floor, and all of a sudden you hear, Hey, Mike Cohan, come down to 74. I got to talk to you. And it’s very off-putting because these are large figures. These are successful attorneys. They’ve got all these plaques hanging in the hallways of the office about 100 million dollar, 500 million dollar settlements in cases that they’ve had.

So at that firm, it was a competition for the bigger and better cases. As a younger associate, I never got the better cases. I got the worst ones. Anybody would tell me, Hey, how come you’re not trying anything? How come you’re not settling anything? I would say, Look, I have all the bad cases. What do you want me to do?
One day on the 75th floor, my boss calls me down on the microphone. Everybody hears it. Ooh, Mike, you’re in trouble. You’re going down to his office. I go to his office, and he goes, Mike, I’m looking at your settlement numbers. I’m looking at your trial numbers. Why is everything so low? I said, You know what? I was like, I’m going to tell him I have all the bad cases. You give me all the bad cases.

And this line, I’ll never forget. He points to all the newspaper clippings and plaques on his wall of the big cases that he had won, and he goes, You see all those? Those were bad cases too.

And in that moment, something clicked inside of me. And from then on, I didn’t see the clients as cases and file numbers and matters. I saw them as people that I had a responsibility for personally, to take care of. Once you start looking at your clients as the people that you’re working with every day and tell yourself you have a responsibility to these people, your results and your success are going to grow exponentially.

I then developed a reputation for turning bad cases into good cases. So I would voluntarily take all the bad cases because of what he said to me. And I had a chip on my shoulder. I can’t believe this guy said this to me. So I would take on the people’s bad cases, and I would try to turn them into gold because they weren’t cases to me anymore. They were people. They were brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, uncles, cousins.

It was my responsibility as their attorney to make them whole. And it still drives me crazy to this day when I call another lawyer and they say, Oh, what file number are you calling about? or What file are you calling about? It drives me nuts because these people are not files. Your clients are not files. They are people. They are going through problems. They have hired you. It is your job to help them.
And that day, that line—I can still picture myself in the office. I can still picture his face when he told me that—it has stuck with me for my entire career. And I’ve made a note to tell my staff all the time, and myself every morning: These are people. These are human beings. They are going through problems. It is not just a file.

And this personal injury field is just littered with trash, I’m sorry to say it, but people that are on social media throwing their settlement checks around and like making memes and jokes about people faking injuries. I think it’s horrible. I don’t think it’s appropriate because there are people that are really injured.

To be honest, I have a lot of friends and family who look down on what I do because of the stigma against personal injury lawyers. I want the people close to me to know what type of dedication and sense of responsibility that I bring to my job, and how I’ve turned people’s lives around. And I think that’s important. I think trial lawyers, personal injury lawyers, but attorneys in general—you should value your clients, you should value your responsibility to your clients, and you should value the oath that you took when you were admitted to the Bar Association, and make sure that every single client that you take care of, you’re giving your best to.

Chad Sands: That was Michael Cohan from Cohan Law Firm, based in New York City. To learn more about Michael and his firm, visit their website, CohanLegal.com. Alright, I’m Chad Sands. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Narrator: You’ve been listening to Celebrating Justice, presented by CloudLex and The Trial Lawyers Journal. Remember, the stories don’t end here. Visit triallawyersjournal.com to become part of our community and keep the conversation going. And for a deeper dive into the tools that empower personal injury law firms, visit cloudlex.com/tlj to learn more.