Cohen & Cohen Differs From High-Volume Settlement Mills
What makes Cohen & Cohen different from high-volume “settlement mill” firms?
What makes Cohen & Cohen different from high-volume firms is a boutique model built to litigate rather than to churn. The difference between us and a settlement mill is our willingness to go to court: while roughly 95% of personal injury cases nationwide resolve before trial, many mass-market firms treat that statistic as a business plan and settle quickly, often before a lawsuit is even filed. We take the opposite approach and put the overwhelming majority of our cases into suit.
Filing suit changes the math for the defense. When an insurance adjuster sees a firm with the resources, the trial record, and the appellate depth to take a case all the way to a verdict, they set aside far larger reserves for the claim. Once a lawsuit is filed, the details generally become public record, and corporate defendants frequently prefer a higher confidential settlement to a public trial that exposes their negligence. We keep an in-house appellate lawyer and trial-advocacy depth on staff precisely so the defense knows we mean it.
“Our job is to squeeze every drop of juice out of the orange. A mass firm’s job is to move cases quickly. Our job is to get every penny for the client.” – Albert Cohen
Cohen & Cohen Investigates Accidents Immediately
What makes a law firm particularly strong when negotiating with insurance companies?
What makes a law firm particularly strong at the negotiating table is leverage, and leverage is built through immediate, exhaustive investigation. A strong negotiating firm does not wait for the police report; it launches its own investigation before evidence disappears. That groundwork is what turns a routine claim into a case the insurer is afraid to try.
In commercial vehicle crashes, for example, critical data can vanish within days. Modern commercial trucks carry Event Data Recorders (“black boxes”) that capture pre-crash metrics like speed and braking, and federal rules require Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) that record a driver’s hours of service. We dispatch accident reconstruction experts to preserve and download that data before it’s lost. We also pull the carrier’s federal records; the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) requires trucking companies to maintain inspection, repair, and maintenance records, where a documented pattern of failed inspections or forced driver fatigue becomes powerful leverage in mediation.
“You want a lawyer who thinks outside the box and digs really, really deep, isolating every case where a carrier’s trucks hit other drivers, to find the pattern of them blaming the victim.”
Senior Trial Attorneys Handle Your Case
Will you personally handle my case, or will it be passed to a junior associate?
Will your case be handled personally or passed to a junior associate? At Cohen & Cohen, your case is led by a seasoned litigator, not handed to a rookie to learn on. In complex matters such as construction accidents, medical malpractice, or commercial trucking collisions, early mistakes can permanently damage a claim’s value, so experience at the front of the case is non-negotiable.
That seniority shows most clearly in preparation. In New York, an Examination Before Trial (EBT), the deposition stage of discovery, is where insurance defense attorneys try to trap plaintiffs into contradictory sworn testimony. Where an average firm might prep a client for a single hour on the morning of the EBT, we prepare our clients across multiple sessions of several hours each, so they walk in confident, credible, and unshakeable. We also work our cases collaboratively, with senior attorneys meeting to dissect strategy so nothing is overlooked.
If you needed surgery, would you want an intern operating on you, or a renowned expert surgeon? You have one life, and you have one case.
| Aspect of your case | Cohen & Cohen senior attorney | Typical junior associate |
|---|---|---|
| Case strategy | Aggressive, case-specific litigation strategy |
Standard templates and basic procedure |
| Trial readiness | Prepared to take the case to a jury verdict |
Limited courtroom experience; leans toward early settlement |
| Deposition (EBT) prep | Multiple sessions, hours each |
Often one brief session before the EBT |
| Medical liens | Files motions to strike or reduce liens |
Typically accepts the stated lien amount |
Cohen & Cohen Keeps Clients Informed at Every Stage
How do client communication, case updates, and consultations work at your firm?
How do communication, case updates, and consultations work here? From the first consultation to the final check, we keep you informed on a set schedule rather than leaving you to chase us. Regular communication isn’t just good service; under New York Rule of Professional Conduct 1.4, attorneys are required to keep clients reasonably informed, and poor communication is one of the leading causes of legal malpractice claims. Our attorneys are expected to update every client every 45 to 60 days throughout the life of the case.
The initial consultation is where we dissect two things: liability and damages. We look past the surface of the accident for underlying “system failures”, such as poor hiring, neglected maintenance, and missing safety training. From there we move fast: we request your medical records (providers generally must produce them within 30 days under HIPAA), investigate liability, and within roughly three months either put the case into suit or tell you plainly that we can’t take it. Moving quickly matters because New York’s statute of limitations for most personal injury claims is three years, and claims against a government entity require a Notice of Claim within just 90 days.
“If a client doesn’t know how to answer a question at the EBT, the legal team failed them in preparation. The client is the king or queen of the case — protecting them is the priority.”
Cohen & Cohen Secures Multi-Million-Dollar Results
What is Cohen & Cohen’s track record for multi-million-dollar settlements?
What is our track record for multi-million-dollar settlements? Cohen & Cohen is a boutique trial firm with a history of substantial, high-value recoveries rather than a high volume of quick, small payouts. Our results come from the same formula in every section of this page: put cases into suit, investigate systemic negligence, prepare clients exhaustively, and refuse to accept lowball offers.
That approach has produced recoveries including a $2.9 million labor-law result used to establish long-term financial security for the client, and multiple seven-figure outcomes across motor-vehicle, premises-liability, and dram-shop cases. In one wrongful-death matter, deep investigation of jail video and body-camera footage revealed aggravating factors that pushed the case’s true value far beyond an early $1 million offer. By pulling black-box and FMCSA data in trucking cases, we’ve exposed carriers with histories of failed inspections and turned routine negligence claims into major recoveries.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Every case is different and is decided on its own facts.
Cohen & Cohen Values Pain and Suffering Through Jury Verdicts
How are pain and suffering damages calculated by your firm?
How does our firm calculate pain and suffering damages? We do not rely on an arbitrary multiplier or an online calculator, we benchmark against what real juries have actually awarded in comparable cases. The industry standard “multiplier method” (economic damages times 1.5 to 5) and “per diem method” (a daily dollar value times days of suffering) both leave money on the table, especially since New York places no statutory cap on compensatory pain-and-suffering damages in a standard personal injury case.
Because the jury is the ultimate authority on what suffering is worth, our process starts there. We investigate the aggravating factors, such as securing black-box data, body-cam footage, and corporate safety logs, then convene our senior attorneys to dissect the evidence, research historical jury verdicts in comparable cases, and set our demand at the maximum the precedent supports. We also weigh the available insurance policy limits, since those often define what is realistically collectible, and we pursue the full limit where a large corporate policy exists.
“Ordinary people hear the case, and if they decide it’s worth $5 million, we ask for $5 million. We don’t just invent a number.”
Contingency Fees Cost You Nothing Upfront
How do contingency fees work?
How do contingency fees work? A contingency fee means your attorney is paid only if they recover money for you. The fee is a percentage of the recovery, and if the case is lost, you owe zero in attorney’s fees. This structure exists so that everyday people can hire top-tier representation without paying thousands upfront in hourly retainers.
In New York, personal injury firms typically charge one-third (33⅓%) of the recovery under a contingency agreement. Medical malpractice cases are different: New York Judiciary Law §474-a sets a mandatory sliding scale, 30% of the first $250,000, 25% of the next $250,000, 20% of the next $500,000, 15% of the next $250,000, and 10% of anything above $1.25 million. Separately from the fee, out-of-pocket case expenses (court filing fees, medical records, expert witnesses, deposition transcripts) are advanced by the firm and reimbursed from the settlement. New York Rule of Professional Conduct 1.5(c) requires every contingency agreement to be in writing and signed, spelling out the percentage, how costs are handled, and any expenses you could be responsible for.
“We charge a third only if we prevail. If we don’t prevail, if we lose, you owe us absolutely nothing.” — Albert Cohen
Cohen & Cohen Litigates Medical Liens in Court
Do you help with medical liens on a settlement or jury award?
Do we help with medical liens after a settlement or jury award? Yes, and we litigate them rather than simply accepting whatever an agency demands. When Medicare or Medicaid covers accident-related treatment, federal and state law give those programs a right to be reimbursed from your recovery (the Medicare Secondary Payer Act for Medicare; state statutory liens for Medicaid). Most firms just phone the agency, ask for a small reduction, and pay it. We don’t.
Instead, we file formal motions asking a judge to strike or drastically reduce the lien. We dispute charges unrelated to the accident, leverage precedent such as the Supreme Court’s Ahlborn decision limiting Medicaid’s recovery to the medical portion of a settlement, and demonstrate the hardship an unreduced lien would impose on the client. Going to court also forces notoriously slow state Medicaid agencies to respond quickly, so your money isn’t tied up in escrow for months. The results speak for themselves:
| Original medical lien | Paid after court intervention | Saved for the client |
|---|---|---|
| $205,000 | $5,000 | $200,000 |
| $67,000 | $0 | $67,000 |
| $40,000 | $4,500 | $35,500 |
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Lien reductions depend on the specific facts and applicable law in each case.
Structured Settlements Protect Your Long-Term Recovery
What is settlement protection?
What is settlement protection? Settlement protection is the process of safeguarding your compensation after you win, so a large recovery actually secures your future instead of disappearing. Winning the award is only half the job; without planning, a payout can be eroded by taxes, liens, and the well-documented difficulty many people face managing a sudden large sum.
We tailor the plan to the size of the award and the client’s needs. Common tools include structured settlements (annuities that pay out in guaranteed installments over years rather than a single lump sum), referrals to trusted fiduciaries and financial advisors, and special needs trusts that preserve a severely injured client’s eligibility for government benefits. On the tax side, compensatory damages for physical injuries are generally excluded from taxable income under Internal Revenue Code §104(a)(2), while punitive damages and damages for emotional distress unconnected to a physical injury are generally taxable, a distinction that makes how the settlement is structured genuinely matter.
“On one $2.9 million recovery, we put the client’s share into an annuity so they’d collect over years and the money wouldn’t get spent unwisely. We want clients to understand exactly what’s going on.” — Albert Cohen
Cohen & Cohen Serves Clients in Multiple Languages
What language accommodations do you offer?
What language accommodations do we offer? In a city where nearly half of residents speak a language other than English at home, we’ve built a team that can represent clients directly in their own language, because effective representation depends on perfect communication. A language barrier should never stand between an accident victim and full compensation.
Our in-house language capabilities include Spanish, with several fully fluent staff members serving one of the city’s largest communities; Russian, spoken fluently by our lead attorney, Albert Cohen, for direct and unfiltered counsel; and Hebrew, spoken by fluent members of our team. For any language we don’t cover in-house, we coordinate professional interpretation so no client is ever left unable to tell their story. Whether it’s the initial consultation, your 45-to-60-day updates, or EBT preparation, we make sure it happens in the language you’re most comfortable speaking.
“If a client didn’t know how to answer a question at the EBT, that means we failed them in preparing. The client is a king or a queen — we make sure we do right by them.” — Albert Cohen
ring. The client is a king or a queen — we make sure we do right by them.” — Albert Cohen
Get a Free Consultation
If you’ve been injured, Cohen & Cohen Personal Injury Lawyers, P.C. will evaluate your case at no cost and on a contingency basis, meaning you pay nothing unless we win. Call (718) 275-7779, available 24/7, or request a call through our contact form. Can’t come to us? We’ll meet you at your home or hospital room.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. The information on this page is for general purposes and is not legal advice. Contacting the firm does not create an attorney-client relationship.
