New York-based Cohen Ziffer Frenchman & McKenna is a boutique with a singular mission: insurance recovery for policyholders. As a group of longtime partners who have worked together for years, the members finally came together to form their own firm in 2021. Their dedication to insurance recovery has culminated in more than $10 billion for policyholders, and its progress has not gone unnoticed by peers. “Cohen Ziffer is obviously doing well, and it’s interesting to see how that boutique size is really working for them, because they’d been at a bunch of big firms before.” Despite observations about its nimble structure working in its favor, the firm is still in strategic growth mode; it added
Joshua Blosveren, a celebrated insurance star formerly with Hoguet Newman, to its bench in 2025. Not long before this, the firm also recruited another star,
Andrew Bourne, from the same firm.
Robin Cohen, one of the firm’s leaders, is an insurance trailblazer and a noted trial luminary. “She loved juries, and vice versa,” declares a peer. “You can tell she shines in that element.” Cohen and
Adam Ziffer led a team that scored what is noted to be a very rare decision in 2023, when a Delaware Superior Court judge reversed an earlier jury verdict in a high-profile insurance coverage dispute between AIG Specialty Insurance Company and firm client Conduent State Healthcare. The background of the litigation includes a June 2019 ruling that policyholder Conduent was entitled to defense coverage from AIG after Conduent received a notice from the Texas Attorney General’s office that it was under investigation for potential wrongdoing. In February 2022, a Delaware jury found that Conduent allegedly tried to defraud AIG into covering part of its Medicaid fraud-related settlement. In January 2024, the court denied AIG’s motion for retrial on the 2023 decision and granted Conduent’s motion for summary judgment that a fraud exclusion did not apply to bar coverage. AIG’s appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court was argued in October 2024. Cohen and Ziffer also represent Paramount Global, the successor-in-interest to Viacom, which settled a shareholder lawsuit arising from the merger for $122.5 million. Viacom’s legacy D&O carriers denied coverage for that amount based on a “bump-up” exclusion, which typically bar insurance coverage for any amount a policyholder might pay to resolve claims that its purchase price for another entity was too low. “I’m a fan of Adam Ziffer,” insists a peer.
Keith McKenna is another firm favorite. A client addresses him as “very responsive, knowledgeable, [and] a problem solver, practical and commercial. A truly excellent attorney all around!”
