Stewart Cohen embodies the best qualities of today’s successful trial attorney – fair-minded, aggressive but not greedy, and pursuing justice for his clients for all the right reasons. With a sense of purpose and humility some lawyers lack, Cohen is a prime-of-his-career example of the abiding virtue of the oft-maligned plaintiffs’ bar. (“We’re a source of power for everyday people, and I’m proud of that.”) Further, Cohen, a born-and-bred “city boy,” reflects the uniquely civil culture of Philadelphia lawyers. As its managing partner, his firm’s reputation has evolved from the renown of a veteran trial attorney Arnold Kessler to one defined more by his leadership -- a rare and remarkable accomplishment.

Growing up in Mount Airy, Cohen says “I knew was going to become a lawyer.” His working-class family encouraged high expectations and performance. (His two older brothers are a lawyer and an accountant, practicing in Florida, today). At Penn State he earned a graduate fellowship before heading to Temple Law School; he excelled in all venues. As a student he sat in on trials of great city lawyers of the day: Arnold Kessler, Joseph Lurie and Jim Beasley, among others.

Cohen joined the firm of Meltzer & Schiffrin, gaining valuable trial experience in his early years. After a merger he found himself a partner at the large, commercially-oriented firm of Fox Rothschild. Within several years he joined Kessler’s firm, well known for

representing negligence victims.

Cohen has taken on major complex cases. In 2004, he represented the family of a child gravely injured by an accident in Luzerne County. The jury award of $25 million shattered the record as the largest in that region of the state. He won a similarly huge recovery for a spinal-cord-injury victim in Chester County. In recent years Cohen has taken on major pharmaceutical companies for deceptive practices and for denials of multi-million-dollar refunds to union health-care plans; one such case took class-action status. He recently took on a complex case challenging informed-consent procedures for organ donors, improving how medicine is practiced in the region. He has written and lectured frequently on insurance and tort-law matters.

A longtime resident of Lower Merion, Pa. (for a decade he served on that municipality’s planning commission), he and his wife, a speech pathologist, have three daughters. He enjoys golf and is a loyal Eagles fan.