Laurie Cohen Brings A Unique Perspective To Her Role As The Village’s Legal Advisor Story and Photo by Julie Unger
After four years on the job, Village Attorney Laurie Cohen signed a contract for another two years in the post last month. That means she will continue to bring her unique perspective to her position as Wellington’s in-house attorney. Cohen has worn multiple hats during her almost two decades in Wellington. She started off as a wife, mother, neighbor and friend when she moved to Wellington with her family in March 1998, when her oldest son, Stuart, was not quite one year old. “I was looking for a community that felt like home and a place where my children could actually grow up and have the same feeling about where they grew up that I had about where I grew up,” she said. Cohen grew up in Maryland, attended the University of Maryland for her undergraduate degree and worked in New York for almost 10 years before attending law school at Nova Southeastern University, graduating in 1995. Within a few years, Cohen was looking for a place to settle down. “I wanted a place that had good schools, I wanted a place that had great family neighborhoods and I wanted a place that felt safe,” she recalled. “When I drove into Wellington, I immediately knew that this was the place that we needed to be.” The Wellington of 1998, however, was quite different from the Wellington of today. “At the time, there was no mall. It was very much still a small town. You didn’t have any of the stores and restaurants and things that you have now,” she said. “The equestrians were here, but it wasn’t as noticeable as I think we have now. There has been a tremendous amount of growth since I moved here.” Between her work as an attorney and raising a young family, Cohen didn’t have much free time. However, when a seat become vacant on the Wellington Village Council in 2003, she put her name in for appointment. She was elected to a full four-year term on the council in 2004, serving until 2008. Cohen has utilized her relationships, connections and experience gained as a councilwoman with her work as village attorney, a title she has held since 2013. “Although that experience is helpful to me as the attorney, I try very hard to keep my role as the village attorney separate from my prior service as a councilwoman,” she said. Her current role, she said, is now advisory for both the 34
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council and the village. “I advise council when questions arise on matters that are coming before them. I try to help them navigate the rules of ethics and the Sunshine Law. I try to give them my best legal advice without injecting my own, personal opinion as a resident,” Cohen said. “I try to help them understand all of the nuances of the various matters that come before them, because it is so varied. It could be contractual, it could be land use, or zoning, and some of these things can be quite complex… I spend a fair amount of time talking with them about applications that come through and really just trying to be an advisor to the council and to the various departments.” Cohen deals with many issues while advising Wellington’s various departments, be it purchasing, engineering, platting, human resources, code enforcement, bid protests, ethics, land use and more. “You have to know a little bit about a wide variety of issues that come before you, because it is extremely varied,” she said. “All of these things come before you, and you’re just constantly dealing with one issue after another.” With a background in commercial litigation, where litigation focuses on a wide variety of matters that attorneys often have to learn about as they are litigated, and cases are worked on from start to finish, municipal law is different, but similar. “What is extremely different is the pace at which you have to be able to think and react,” she said, likening municipal law to being a general practitioner. In her role as village attorney, Cohen addresses issues that come up in the course of doing the daily work of the village and constantly shifts gears to focus on an issue, provide advice, and then return her focus to what she was working on previously. Cohen’s time on the council, and longevity in the community, have served her well. She was already familiar with many of the major issues of the community, the parties for pending lawsuits and many of the lawyers who come before her regarding various matters. Even as Wellington has grown, it still retains the smalltown feel that drew Cohen here in the first place.