Betsy Miller

Betsy A. Miller is Chair of Cohen Milstein’s’ Public Client practice and a certified leadership coach, author, and speaker. She is a seasoned litigator and trailblazer on leadership development and culture change in the legal profession. With 20+ years in private and government practice in Washington, D.C., Betsy has built a reputation for deftly guiding some of the country’s highest profile government investigations and landmark settlements. She was lead outside counsel for several state Attorneys General in the national opioid litigation that delivered more $25 billion in relief and negotiated a $2.2 billion resolution as co-lead counsel for states prosecuting consumer fraud cases against the nation’s largest credit rating agencies. Her approach to leading through complexity is grounded in principles she practiced as a professional mediator and teaches as a member of the adjunct faculty at Harvard and Georgetown law schools.

Betsy has been privileged to receive numerous professional awards, most recently The National Law Journal’s Keith Givens Visionary Award, which “honors a member of the bar who has shown extraordinary creativity in bringing the legal industry together, developing new opportunities for growth, and supporting the professional development of attorneys across the country.” During the 2021-2022 academic year, Betsy was awarded a Wasserstein Fellowship at Harvard Law School, which “recognizes exemplary lawyers who have distinguished themselves in public interest work” and invites them to campus to mentor the next generation public-service lawyers. Most recently, the President of the American Bar Association appointed Miller as a Special Advisor to the Commission on Women in the Profession.

Other accolades include annual recognition by Lawdragon on its “500 Leading Lawyers in America” list, The National Law Journal and The Trial Lawyer, which have identified Betsy as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Trial Lawyers,” and The National Law Journal, which also included Betsy as one of just nine women in the nation on its inaugural list of “Elite Women of the Plaintiffs’ Bar.”

Betsy’s legal career is augmented by her work in leadership coaching, facilitation, and change management. She has authored numerous articles on leadership and cultural change, including The National Law Journal’s ongoing series on Leadership in the Law. Recent publications include: “BOTH: The Legal Profession’s Struggle to Leverage Stability and Change“; “Ditch the Annual Review“; “Leadership and the Law: How to Fix a Puzzling Quirk“; “Meetings Matter. Make them Better“; “How to Flip the Script on the Annual Review Process“; and “The New Language Needed to Connect Professionally Right Now.” She is a regular commentator on leadership in the legal profession for Thomson Reuters, The American Lawyer, Law.com, and The National Law Journal.

Betsy earned her A.B. from Dartmouth College, J.D. from Harvard Law School, and certificates in Leadership Coaching and Navigating Polarities from Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership.