Jillian Raines has practiced on the biggest stages available to an insurance lawyer, as both an in-house lawyer at the world’s largest technology corporation and outside counsel to corporate policyholders.
Returning to private practice in 2021 after serving as a corporate insurance attorney for Apple Inc., Jill helps policyholder clients navigate their most complex insurance-related issues. As a partner at Cohen Ziffer Frenchman & McKenna LLP in New York, Jill has managed a variety of coverage lawsuits and claims, from directors & officers insurance disputes to cutting-edge privacy and product liability claims under technology errors & omissions and general liability policies.
In a recent high-impact matter, Jill helped secure for Paramount Global (formerly Viacom Inc.) a ruling from the Superior Court of Delaware that Viacom’s insurers cannot avoid covering a $122.5 million settlement resolving a shareholder lawsuit over Viacom’s merger with CBS. In granting Viacom’s motion, the court held that the D&O policy’s bump-up exclusion, which is located in the policy’s loss definition, was in fact, an exclusion, requiring that it be construed strictly and narrowly under Delaware law, with any ambiguity resolved in favor of the insured, i.e. Viacom.
Jill also helps a number of Fortune 500 companies to secure insurance coverage for complex claims short of litigation under D&O, EPL, cyber, property, and liability policies—work that is uniquely informed by her prior in-house role at Apple. While there, Jill advised the company on its insurance policy language and claims navigation, risk management and mitigation strategies, and insurance due diligence. Her responsibilities also included insurance regulatory matters from insurance licensing and product filings to drafting policy and service contract terms and conditions globally.
Now at Cohen Ziffer, Jill runs Cohen Ziffer’s advisory services team, helping her clients, including major technology, retail, biomedical, private equity, and critical infrastructure clients pre- and post-litigation by performing insurance program audits, corporate risk assessments, insurance due diligence, and claim resolution services.
Between her graduation from law school in 2012 and 2018, Jill worked with the founding partners of Cohen Ziffer at two different Am Law 200 firms, acting as a key contributor to the insurance recovery group’s success. Before joining Apple, she also served as a Legal & Policy Fellow for The Governance Lab at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, an advocacy organization headed by Dr. Beth Noveck, New Jersey’s first chief innovation officer, who led President Obama’s Open Government Initiative.
Jill was named a winner of Business Insurance’s Break Out Award in 2022 and was recognized as a Rising Star by Insurance Business America in October 2021.
Year Joined Firm: 2021
Education: New York Law School (J.D., magna cum laude, Visual Scholarship Web Editor, New York Law School Law Review); Pennsylvania State University (B.A.)
Uploaded Aug 2024
