ERIC COOPERSTEIN started his private law practice devoted to legal ethics in the fall of 2006. Eric is former Senior Assistant Director of the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility, where he worked from 1995 to 2001, and a former member of the 4th District Ethics Committee, on which he served from 2003 through April 2007.
Eric was recently appointed to the Minnesota Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee regarding the Attorney Discipline System and is a member of the MSBA’s Rules of Professional Conduct Committee and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL).
2006- Present Law Office of Eric T.
Cooperstein, PLLC
Private Practice
2001-2008 Office of the Monitor
Assistant Senior Counsel
1995-2001 Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility (OLPR)
Senior Assistant Director
1995-2001 William Mitchell College of Law
Adjunct Professor
1990-1995 Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis
Staff Attorney
1990-1992 Mansfield & Tanick
Associate
1990 - University of Minnesota Law School
Graduated cum laude
1985 - Hamilton College
Graduated magna cum laude
Eric grew up in and around New York City and attended Hamilton College, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1985. Eric left New York to attend the University of Minnesota Law School, from which he graduated cum laude in 1990.
Eric has been fortunate to have a series of great legal jobs. For the first 18 months after law school, he worked both as an associate at the Minneapolis law firm of Mansfield & Tanick and as a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis. Eric continued full time at Legal Aid for over three more years before moving on to the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsiblity (OLPR) in 1995. At OLPR, Eric investigated and prosecuted allegations of attorneys' violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct, provided hundreds of advisory opinions to Minnesota lawyers, supervised the Trust Account Overdraft Notification Program, wrote articles for Minnesota Lawyer, and presented numerous seminars on ethics issues.
In 2001, Eric joined the Office of the court-appointed Monitor of the black farmers’ class-action settlement regarding race discrimination in USDA farm loan programs. Over the next seven years, Eric played a substantial role in helping the Office issue over 5,700 decisions for class members and the government. The black farmers’ case (Pigford v. Schaffer) is widely recognized as the largest class action civil rights settlement by the government in U.S. history, with over $980 million paid to class members to date.
Eric is also an active volunteer in his community. He currently serves as the chair of the board of a small foundation, recently completed four years as the chair of an advisory board for his children's school, and is active in the Hennepin County and Minnesota Bar Associations. Eric was a "graduate" of the first year of the Hennepin County Bar Association's LINC program -- Lawyers Impacting the Nonprofit Community -- a six-month series of seminars designed to train lawyers to serve nonprofit organizations.
