Alvin M. "Al" Cohen

Alvin Cohen is a trial lawyer, representing businesses involved in the construction and real estate industries. Typical clients include prime contractors and subcontractors, material suppliers, homebuilders, land developers, and commercial real estate developers. Al’s practice includes both private sector projects and government contracts. His construction cases span the full range of construction disputes, and he has litigated, for example, complex delay and disruption claims and their attendant critical path scheduling analysis, acceleration claims, disputed changes, construction defects, and mechanic’s liens. These cases involved industrial, commercial, and residential projects. His real estate litigation practice is also broad and has included a range of disputes, such as lender disputes, buyer-seller disputes, adverse possession claims, partition claims, disputes among owners of the developer entity, etc. Al began his career as a trial lawyer for the Tennessee Valley Authority, where he handled numerous construction disputes, many of which went to trial in federal court or before the Board of Contract Appeals. In addition to his trial practice, Al serves as advisory counsel to his construction clients. This includes pre-dispute counseling and drafting and negotiating contracts. Increasingly, Al has been putting his 40 years of experience to use as a mediator of construction disputes. Since joining the firm in 2019, Al has served as the mediator on well over 35 construction disputes of all sizes and complexity. In 2023, to sharpen his mediator skills, Al completed the semester-long course on Mediation and Conflict Management within the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. In addition, he has been on the American Arbitration Association panel of arbitrators for 25 years and has served as both sole arbitrator and as a member of three-person arbitration panels. Al is a Fellow of the Construction Lawyers Society of America.