In a conversation with Arthur Rothrock on The Litigator's Path, Cohn walks through how he launched a solo criminal defense practice straight out of law school with no family connections to the profession, what he learned about courtroom presence by simply sitting and watching before ever taking a case, the negotiation framework he picked up at a Harvard Kennedy School executive education course, and how legal directories – not pay-per-click ads – became his primary client acquisition channel. The thread running through it all: a solo criminal defense practice can sustain itself for decades if you treat it like a small business from day one and never stop earning your reputation in the courthouse.
How Edward Cohn Markets a Solo Criminal Defense Practice Without Pay-Per-Click Ads
Cohn does not buy Google Ads. He has watched colleagues spend heavily on pay-per-click campaigns with mixed results – some complain about tire-kickers who click but never retain – and decided the economics did not fit his practice. Instead, he invests in paid placements on legal directories: Avvo, Lawyers.com, Martindale-Hubbell, and Nolo. His Avvo profile carries a 10-out-of-10 rating, and he pointed to a call that came in the same week as the recording from a prospective client who found him there.
The directory strategy works, Cohn says, because the people searching those platforms already have a legal problem and are actively looking to hire. He pairs that with nearly 50 five-star Google reviews, a professional website with video content and a blog, and steady word-of-mouth referrals from former clients. None of it is passive. Cohn described marketing as the part of practicing law that most attorneys would rather skip, but he treats it as non-negotiable overhead: "you have to be something significant online" for a client to pick up the phone.
His early marketing looked nothing like this. When Cohn started practicing in Michigan in 2002, Yellow Pages ads were still a real line item. He also used Legal Match, a lead-generation service that connected him with prospective clients during the years when he was trying to build volume. The shift from print directories to digital ones tracks almost exactly with his career arc – and he adapted at each stage rather than clinging to what had worked the year before.
What Cohn Learned About Courtroom Presence by Watching Before Practicing
Before he ever argued a motion, Cohn spent time sitting in Michigan courtrooms as a spectator. He watched arraignments, pretrial hearings, and trials – not to study doctrine, but to learn procedure, pacing, and how individual judges ran their rooms. He learned which judges were stern, which were conversational, and how experienced attorneys navigated each temperament. One attorney he watched regularly was Geoffrey Fieger, the Michigan trial lawyer who represented Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Cohn and Fieger attended the same high school, and Cohn recalls being struck by how relaxed Fieger appeared in court – "like he was out for a walk in the park" – while still being an effective advocate.
That observation shaped Cohn's own courtroom style. He aims to stay calm enough that his clients can take a cue from his demeanor. Even at an arraignment, which Cohn describes as straightforward and elementary from a legal standpoint, clients are often terrified. A visibly relaxed attorney brings the temperature down. Cohn considers that ability – projecting calm while staying sharp – one of the most practical skills a criminal defense attorney can develop, and he traces it directly to those early days of watching from the gallery.
For attorneys launching their own litigation practices, this is a low-cost, high-return preparation method that rarely comes up in CLE conversations. It costs nothing but time, and it builds familiarity with local courts that no treatise can replicate.
Cohn's Negotiation Framework: Letting the Other Side Think They Won
Most criminal cases in Tucson – misdemeanors and felonies alike – never reach trial. Cohn estimates that only a small percentage do, which means his day-to-day effectiveness depends far more on negotiation than on courtroom performance. To sharpen that skill, he enrolled in an executive education course at Harvard Kennedy School focused on negotiation techniques. The program compressed a semester's worth of material into a single intensive week, covering everything from one-on-one contract discussions to multi-party diplomatic simulations.
The principle Cohn carried away and still uses daily: "the art of negotiation is letting the other party have it your way." The goal is to reach the outcome you want while allowing the prosecutor to feel the resolution was reasonable on their end. In practice, that means Cohn writes detailed letters on behalf of his clients – outlining community involvement, personal circumstances, and reasons a concession is warranted – rather than relying solely on verbal advocacy at a hearing.
He also emphasized the long game of prosecutor relationships. Cohn has built working relationships with several Tucson prosecutors over years of repeated cases. Those relationships do not guarantee favorable outcomes, but they create a baseline of mutual respect. Prosecutors who know Cohn understand he will push hard for his client, and he, in turn, makes a point of thanking them when a negotiation produces a good result. "Being incredibly gracious is helpful," he said – and the goodwill carries forward to the next case.
How Edward Cohn Launched a Solo Practice Straight Out of Law School
Cohn graduated law school in 2002, passed the bar, and hung his own shingle immediately – no stint at a DA's office, no public defender rotation, no associate position at an established firm. He had no lawyers in his family and no built-in referral network. What he did have was a semester-long elective called Law Practice Management, which he took during his final term. The course required students to build a detailed notebook covering every operational aspect of starting a firm, from client intake to marketing to overhead management. By the time he graduated, Cohn had a working playbook.
His early infrastructure was lean. A mentor allowed him to use office space for client meetings. He also used courthouse meeting rooms and, later, a virtual office that offered a professional appearance without full-time rent. He got on every court-appointment list he could find to build volume and experience. A friend with a retained murder case brought him on as second chair for a nominal fee – practically nothing financially, but it gave him a front-row seat to jury selection, trial procedure, and judicial management in a high-stakes setting. Bob Hartmann built his practice on a similar foundation of court-appointed work and bench relationships in Orange County.
Cohn describes 2002 through 2004 as pure experience-gathering. By 2005, roughly three years in, he started to feel a rhythm – confident in his calendar management, comfortable in court, beginning to see results from early online marketing efforts. By his seventh year, around 2009, he felt seasoned enough to take on any case that walked through the door. The timeline is worth noting for attorneys considering the solo path: Cohn's comfort did not arrive overnight, but it did arrive – and it came from volume, not from waiting until he felt ready.
Running a Criminal Defense Practice With Minimal Overhead
Cohn operates without a paralegal and without a large staff. He has a legal assistant and uses receptionists to answer calls, but he drafts his own pleadings and manages his own calendar. He has occasionally brought on University of Arizona law students – typically third-years – to handle motion drafting and law clerk work on an as-needed basis, but he has never staffed up to a full-time team.
This is a deliberate choice, not a limitation. Cohn's practice model depends on keeping overhead low enough that the inevitable dry spells of solo criminal defense work do not create financial pressure. He describes the income pattern as "feast or famine" and says comfort with that uncertainty is a prerequisite for anyone considering solo practice. His advice is blunt: if you need a steady paycheck and prefer having an employer, solo work is probably not a good fit. But if you have an entrepreneurial mindset and can tolerate the hills and valleys, the tradeoff is autonomy – setting your own schedule, choosing your own cases, and answering only to your clients.
For solo litigators who handle their own document drafting, the time cost of producing pleadings and motions without dedicated support is real. Platforms like Legion are designed to cut that drafting time from hours to minutes, which is especially relevant for practitioners running Cohn's kind of lean operation.
What Litigators Can Take Away
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Cohn builds his entire client acquisition strategy around paid legal directory profiles on Avvo, Lawyers.com, and Martindale-Hubbell rather than Google Ads – and points to his perfect 10 Avvo rating and nearly 50 five-star Google reviews as the assets that actually convert browsers into callers.
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Before ever taking a case, Cohn spent days watching hearings in Michigan courtrooms to learn local procedure, judge temperaments, and effective advocacy styles – a free preparation method he credits with making his first year of practice far less daunting.
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Cohn applies a negotiation principle from a Harvard Kennedy School executive education course to every prosecutor interaction: structure the deal so the other side believes the outcome was their idea, even when you got what you wanted.
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He treats gratitude as a strategic tool, consistently thanking prosecutors after favorable resolutions so that the next negotiation starts from a foundation of goodwill rather than adversarial posturing.
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Cohn took a Law Practice Management elective in his final semester of law school and used the detailed operational notebook it required as his actual business plan when he launched his solo practice immediately after passing the bar – a concrete example of turning coursework into a startup roadmap.
Listen to the Full Episode
Edward Cohn's full conversation with Arthur Rothrock covers more ground than this article can hold – including his reflections on adapting to difficult judges, the emotional satisfaction that keeps him in criminal defense, and why humility may be the most underrated trait in solo practice. Listen to the full episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and learn more about Cohn's practice at cohnjustice.com.