Steven Cohen is a lawyer with extensive expertise in class action lawsuits focused on public impact. He currently serves as a founding partner at Pollock Cohen LLP. Cohen also has experience in the intersection between business and journalism, previously serving as executive producer for Time magazine’s Man of the Year television documentaries. In a wide-ranging conversation with the HPR, Cohen outlined his views on modern political division in the United States, recommended books for anxious parents, and discussed the power of real people to stand up against injustice in class-action lawsuits.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Harvard Political Review: You originally started your career working on Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, but then shifted to marketing for Time magazine. With your experience in politics, business, and public relations, do you see any threads that connect throughout your career?
Steven Cohen: There have been many links between many career choices over the years. I began in politics with someone who said that selling a candidate is just like selling a product, which led me to transition into advertising. I learned about marketing and advertising and then segued into publishing.
Publishing is not editing, but rather the business side of both books and magazines, which involves circulation and advertising sales. I did that at Time for both the magazine and the video group. I did it for Scholastic for almost a dozen years, [where] I was lucky enough to be both a publisher and a marketer.
At the same time, I learned how to write. I started writing articles early on and then segued into books, and I co-authored or authored seven books, three of which have been national bestsellers. I was very lucky to go from the traditional publishing world into online publishing.
I went to law school at age 58. I spent 35 years essentially as a publisher with little dips into politics. I was not only in politics but also in public service. I was on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, I worked on some small losing campaigns, including for a very good friend who won’t let me forget that he listened to my advice and came in third.
Then, I had the opportunity to go to law school. I had thought about attending law school right out of college, but other events took me in a different direction and brought me back to New York after graduating from Brown. I went into politics and then into advertising and publishing. In 2009, I served on a jury [for] a big terrorism trial in the Southern District of New York in federal court, and I wound up writing about that trial.
It wasn’t the first trial I had been a juror on or had written about. But this was unusual. It was a very high-profile case. It led to me going unexpectedly to law school at age 58.
HPR: What was the trial specifically about?
SC: The defendant was accused of terrorism — trying to sell surface-to-air missiles, rifles, ammunition, and grenades to the FARC in Colombia, but it turned out to be a sting operation. The US Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department did an identical sting operation with the same operatives two years later to get Victor Boot, the famous Russian arms dealer.
At the end of the case, we had convicted [the defendant], and we were talking to the reporters. A woman waited in the background; she’d been in the courtroom the entire trial, three and a half weeks, and never spoken to anyone. In my experience, jurors talk about everything except the case when they go to lunch or on their breaks.
This woman stayed alone for three and a half weeks. But at the end of the trial, she walked up to the jurors and said, ‘My name is Lisa Klinghoffer.’
Only two of us on the jury knew immediately of Klinghoffer. She said, ‘My father was Leon Klinghoffer, the American tourist who was killed by the Palestine Liberation Front when they hijacked the cruise ship, the Achilles Laurel. The Achilles Laurel was a cruise ship, and it was in the Mediterranean. PLF hijacked it and killed him. Leon was in a wheelchair. He was disabled, and they shot him. They videoed him, and they threw him into the Mediterranean Sea.
She said, ‘It was my father who was killed, and the man you just convicted was tried for the murder of my father in Spain for providing the weapons to the PLF, but he was acquitted.’ He was acquitted because the two main witnesses against him just happened to fall out of the fourth-floor window of the courthouse during the trial.
HPR: Across the various ventures and phases of your career, is there a common mindset that guides your transitions, and how do you decide when and where to pivot?
SC: I’ve been accused by people sometimes that I don’t focus on money. When I started this law firm seven years ago with Adam Pollock, we decided we had a mantra: We want to do good and do well. We are not a public interest law firm. We are a public impact law firm.
I want cases that make us money, but I also want cases that make an impact on people’s lives in areas where we can give voice and justice to underrepresented people. With all my career moves, I’ve tried to do things to wake up in the morning and be excited about going to work. And I’ve been fortunate to be able to do that for the most part.
HPR: The case against New York City Hall and the insurance companies for retirement funds is one that gained notoriety. Was there one moment in the case or story encapsulating a key takeaway?
SC: Retirees in New York City are entitled by law to health insurance paid for by New York City. It’s incorporated into New York City Administrative Law 12-126, and it’s been the law for over 50 years that the city will pay for the health insurance of employees and retirees and their dependents up to a certain dollar cap.
It’s no surprise to anyone that health care is extremely expensive. Mayor Bill de Blasio and now Mayor Adams figured out that if they could move people off the health insurance that most of them want — which is traditional Medicare and a supplemental insurance plan that pays for the 20% of health costs that Medicare doesn’t pay for — into Medicare Advantage, it would save the city $600 million a year.
When Eric Adams was a candidate for mayor, he was behind the retirees, but when he became Mayor Adams, someone whispered in his ear, ‘Mr. Mayor, all you have to do is check and move them from here to there. They still have Medicare of a different sort. It’s not quite as good, but it’s just about as good. It’ll give you $600 million a year to play with.’
We won three cases against New York City because they keep coming up with new ways to try and force people off of traditional Medicare to find that $600 million.
One of the key lessons I’ve learned in a couple of different ways is that we’re talking about real people. I have had hundreds of retirees call me during the day, on weekends, and at night because I’m their lawyer. We represent the class, I’m their lawyer, and I have to talk to them. They deserve it. Real people are being affected by this, and they deserve to understand what’s going on.
The other thing is that I am the worst legal writer in the firm but a reasonably good storyteller. After winning three trial-level victories and three appellate victories, I have realized that telling people’s stories in the press and the courtroom makes a difference.
HPR: What advice do you have for students to stand up to bullies now and in their future careers?
SC: Many of the cases we do are class-action cases. The hardest part of the class action is finding a representative plaintiff. I tell every prospective plaintiff who contacts us, ‘Think about it.’ Some of the best advice I ever got early on was from a friend, who’s a lawyer, who said, ‘By all means, avoid the law.’
It’s going to be disappointing. It’s going to be frustrating. But it takes people with the fortitude to stand up and say, ‘I’m willing to fight this,’ either for themselves or others. I know it is a loss of privacy and a pain in the neck dealing with lawyers, but it has to be done. I admire those people so much for having the strength to do that.
