Joel Cohen is Of Counsel at Ruskin Moscou Faltischek, P.C. and a member of the firm’s White Collar Crime and Investigations Practice Group.
At the outset of his legal career, Mr. Cohen served for ten years as a prosecutor. He first served as a Special Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the New York State Prosecutor’s Office, where he investigated and prosecuted high profile corruption cases involving the New York City criminal justice system. He later served as a Special Attorney and then Assistant Attorney in Charge with the Organized Crime & Racketeering Section of the U.S. Department of Justice in the Eastern District of New York, where he prosecuted high level mafia figures and corruption cases.
Beginning in 1985, Mr. Cohen became a white-collar criminal defense lawyer at the national law firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. There, for many years, he represented individuals and corporations under investigation and prosecution by federal and state authorities involving all aspects of white-collar crime and regulatory offenses, including well known public officials under investigation and prosecution. He has also conducted extensive investigations for corporations faced with potential malfeasance by employees and has represented attorneys in numerous disciplinary investigations and prosecutions. More recently he has been senior counsel at Petrillo Klein & Boxer.
In addition to his legal practice, Mr. Cohen has served as an adjunct professor for almost twenty-five years, first at Brooklyn Law School and later at Fordham Law School, where he taught “Professional Responsibility.” For the past twelve years, Mr. Cohen has co-taught a seminar entitled “How Judges Decide” at Fordham and also at Cardozo Law School, an outgrowth of his book “Blindfolds Off: Judges On How They Decide,” published in 2014 by the American Bar Association.
In addition to Blindfolds Off, Mr. Cohen has published six other books, including “Broken Scales: Reflections on Injustice” (also published by the American Bar Association) and Truth Be Veiled, which examines a criminal lawyer’s duty to truth. He has also published three books of Biblical fiction, including the noted Moses: A Memoir.
Mr. Cohen has authored approximately 800 articles, including a bimonthly column in the New York Law Journal titled “Ethics & Criminal Practice.” He also writes regularly for The Hill, Bloomberg Law, The Times of Israel, AM New York and Slate on issues involving law, ethics, social policy, and religion. In part as a result of his extensive writing, he has been asked to moderate many legal programs for organizations including the New York State Bar Association, Federal Bar Council, the Eastern District Association, the New York County Lawyers Association, and the Jewish Lawyers Guild. In the past year he has authored op eds published at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
From 2010 to 2018, Mr. Cohen served as a member of the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct, which is responsible for investigating and prosecuting judges at all levels of the New York State judiciary.
Mr. Cohen is a graduate of the New York University School of Law, where he received both a J.D. and an LL.M. with a concentration in federal taxation.
Mr. Cohen is admitted to practice in New York State, the federal courts in New York, the United States Supreme Court, and a number of federal courts around the country.
New York University School of Law (LL.M., Federal Taxation)
New York University School of Law (J.D.)