Dechert Leader Cohen Follows ‘Upstairs’ Mentor to New Challenge

Vincent Cohen Jr. will take on a new challenge as a Dechert global managing partner later this year while juggling his work as a white collar litigator for corporate giants including Microsoft Corp.

The ascendancy brings a special significance for Cohen because of his efforts to boost the ranks of Black and other diverse lawyers at Dechert and throughout Big Law. He’s building on a family legacy as the son of the trail-blazing D.C. lawyer Vincent H. Cohen, a trial attorney with Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department who later became the first Black partner with Hogan & Hartson.

“He was the reason I became a lawyer,” Cohen, 52, said of his father in an interview. “People look outside of their houses for role models and mentors. And I had one right upstairs.”

The challenge Cohen is taking on when he assumes the role July 1 is to keep Dechert on its growth trajectory at a time when transactional work for law firms has slowed and the US economy faces a possible recession.

Dechert’s revenue rose by about 25% to more than $1.34 billion in 2021, making it the 32nd biggest firm, according to data from The American Lawyer. Equity partner profits that year skyrocketed by about 50% to $4.2 million, the data showed.

Cohen aided the growth through his work with clients including Microsoft, which is part of the Justice Department’s ongoing, landmark antitrust fight against Alphabet Inc.'s Google over that tech giant’s search practices.

He also represented Takeshi “Tyrone” Uonaga, former chief financial officer of Panasonic Avionics, in charges brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and he’s part of a Dechert team that represents the District of Columbia in its suit against Proud Boys International for that group’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Firm’s Trajectory

The firm is primed to continue its upward trajectory, Cohen said. Dechert includes a number of strong practice groups “that are valuable across the economic environment,” he said, which will help clients weather possible economic storms in 2023.

He singled out the firm’s products liability, antitrust, and the global funds practices, as well as its financial restructuring group, all of which “are going to be ready for any economic downturn,” he said.

The firm during the pandemic avoided overhiring and “because of that, I think we’re we’re in a good place to move,” Cohen said.

The other Dechert global managing partner will be Paris-based tax partner Sabina Comis, who will be joined by new firm co-chairs David Forti and Mark Thierfelder from the firm’s Philadelphia and New York offices respectively.

The four-person leadership team will replace chair Andy Levander and CEO Henry Nassau.

Cohen said “a lot” of people within the firm requested that he throw his hat into the ring for the leadership job. “It’s the kind of request that you say yes to,” he said.

He already has served on a number of leadership positions at the firm, including as a member of the firm’s 14-partner policy committee.

Philadelphia-founded Dechert boasts more than 1,000 lawyers including 332 partners, according to a firm spokeswoman, and 21 offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia, according to its website.

Career Ascendancy

Cohen, a former point guard for Syracuse University under longtime basketball coach Jim Boeheim, graduated from Syracuse University College of Law in 1995. He moved back to D.C., where he was born and raised, to clerk for Cheryl M. Long, then the D.C. Superior Court’s presiding judge of the Tax and Probate Division.

In 1997, he began work as an assistant US attorney. About a year after he started, a gun possession came up that he was eager to take, recalls Danny Onorato, who was a fellow assistant US attorney and is now a partner at Schertler Onorato Mead & Sears.

Cohen took the case despite significant hurdles, including opposing counsel. Michele Roberts, who later would go on to become the first woman to serve as executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, represented the defense.

Cohen lost, Onorato said, but not before “putting up an extraordinary fight.”

“To see him go toe to toe with the best was inspiring,” he said.

Cohen years later joined Onorato at the litigation boutique before he jumped back to the US attorney’s office in 2010 for a five-year stint as the principal assistant US attorney for the District of Columbia, under then-US attorney Ron Machen.

Cohen served as acting US attorney for about a year after Machen left the post, before joining Dechert in 2016.

Cohen was the “clear choice” to be his principal assistant, both because of his legal skill and his recognition of the importance of relationship-building within the community, said Machen, now chair of the litigation and competition group at WilmerHale in Washington.

Machen said Cohen held as many as 40 meetings per month with community members and groups as a proxy for him.

Importance of Diversity

Cohen said he learned from his dad and other mentors, like Machen and Long, the priority of pushing for diversity in the legal industry—and the importance of giving back.

“If I followed his lead, I could become what he was, which was a great lawyer, but also a great father,” Cohen said.

Industry acceptance of the need for diversity, boosted by often-helpful pressure from clients to increase the ranks of women attorneys as well as Blacks, Hispanics and lawyers from other historically disadvantaged groups, has helped improve the situation within Big Law firms, said Cohen, who has worked on the issue at his firm.

But figures are still mostly “disheartening,” he said. The roughly 2% of Black partners at large firms has only risen a slight amount over the decades, “since my father’s time,” he said.

A January 2022 Bloomberg Law report found that 2.7% of law firm partners were Black, while 6% of associates were.

A Dechert spokeswoman pointed to stats at the firm that hint at a more diverse future, including that 50% of the firm’s associate classes are diverse or LGBTQ.

She also noted the firm’s “robust” mentoring program, and the fact that since 2019, the firm has achieved Mansfield “Plus” Certification for three consecutive years, which means it reached 30% diverse lawyer representation in a notable number of current leadership roles and committees.

There are more positive indicators that change will be coming faster before long, Cohen said, including younger generations of attorneys of all genders and ethnicities who are less tolerant of the status quo.

His new management role will allow him to give diversity and inclusion issues a bigger megaphone within the firm, Cohen said.

The elder Cohen, who died in 2011, was renowned for guiding younger Black attorneys back in his day, sometimes around his kitchen table, said his son and Machen.

“I love that he’s picking up where his dad left off,” said Machen of Cohen. “It’s coming around full circle. The gene is strong.”