Mark Cohen

Background

Cohen was born on December 17, 1961, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the state capital and the largest city in the state. Oklahoma City lies about 20 miles north of Norman, where the University of Oklahoma's main campus is located, and that university later became the first of his two degree-granting institutions.

Oklahoma was a territory until its admission to the Union in 1907, and the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature had established the University of Oklahoma in Norman on December 19, 1890. Growing up in the state's principal urban center during the decades that followed placed him in a region where the state's public university system and the legal profession were both developing alongside Oklahoma's statehood.

Education

Cohen received a Bachelor of Arts with high distinction in International Relations from the University of Oklahoma in 1983, and his record also notes membership in Phi Beta Kappa. The university was established by the territorial legislature in 1890 and held its first classes in rented downtown buildings in Norman in 1892. Phi Beta Kappa, founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary, is the oldest collegiate honor society in the United States and recognizes academic achievement in the liberal arts and sciences.

He continued his legal education at Harvard Law School, where he received a Juris Doctor cum laude in 1986. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United States and was among the first law schools to be established at a university in the country.

Cohen served as a member of the Harvard Board of Student Advisers from 1984 to 1986. The board was created by a 1910 faculty resolution to encourage early and effective use of the law library and to make the law clubs more efficient. Over the twentieth century its responsibilities evolved to include academic advising and mentoring of first-year students, and it also administers the Ames Moot Court competition.

Career

Cohen's documented professional career is centered on Haynes and Boone, where he is a partner. The firm was founded in Dallas in 1970 by Richard Haynes and Michael Boone. Haynes had opened a solo law office in Dallas in 1964 while teaching securities law at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, and the firm's early growth came from securities work on Dallas initial public offerings.

During the 1980s the firm expanded through several mergers and opened offices in four major Texas cities, and in 1990 it merged with Watt, White & Craig to establish a Houston presence. Today the firm is headquartered in Dallas and has offices in other parts of the United States as well as London, Mexico City and Shanghai.

Cohen was admitted to the State Bar of Texas in 1986, to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas in 1987, and to the District of Columbia Bar in 1989. These admissions gave him standing to practice in Texas, in the federal courts of the Northern District, and in the District of Columbia.

In 1990 and 1991 he published writings on Texas law affecting foreign real estate investment and on immigration matters. The 1990 Immigration Act, the subject of one of his 1991 articles, was a major revision of federal immigration law that was enacted the same year.

Works

• article

  • INS Employer: Sanctions Inspection and Due Process

    (Article in the February 1991 issue of Personnel Law Updat...)

    1991

  • Overview of the Immigration Act of 1990

    (Article in the March 1991 issue of Personnel Law Update, ...)

    1991

  • Synopsis of Significant Texas Law Affecting Foreign Real Estate Investment and Lending Activities

    (Published in Volume 6, No. 4 (July 1990) of the Newslette...)

    1990

Membership

Cohen's bar memberships connect him with the professional associations of lawyers in several jurisdictions. The District of Columbia Bar is the bar association for lawyers admitted to practice in the District, and he has been a member of its International Trade Committee since 1989. The State Bar of Texas, the integrated bar association for lawyers in Texas, also includes an International Trade Committee, on which he has served as a member since 1989.

His international and immigration practice is reflected in further affiliations. The International Bar Association, founded in 1947, brings together bar associations and law societies from many countries. The American Bar Association, founded in 1878 as a national voluntary association of lawyers, is the organization through which he has served on its International and Customs Law committees since 1988. The American Immigration Lawyers Association is a national professional association of attorneys who practice immigration law, and he was a member in 1987.

• Member of the International Trade Committee

  District of Columbia Bar , United States

  1989

• Member of the International Trade Committee

  State Bar of Texas , United States

  1989

• International Bar Association

• International Section Council Officer

  Dallas Bar Association , United States

  1988

• Member of the International Trade and Customs Law Committees

  American Bar Association , United States

  1988

• American Immigration Lawyers Association , United States

  1987

References

• Martindale-Hubbell Lawyer directory entry describing Cohen's professional practice and standing in the legal community.