About Us

Minnesota Lawyer

Staff Biographies

 

Editor-in-chief

Mark A. Cohen is the editor-in-chief of Minnesota Lawyer. In this position, Cohen is responsible for overseeing the editorial content of the weekly newspaper, website, blog and related print and online products. 

Prior to joining Minnesota Lawyer, Cohen served as the legal editor of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. He also served as the managing editor of Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly. Cohen's prior journalistic experience includes serving as a correspondent for the Lowell Sun, a daily newspaper in Massachusetts.

Cohen obtained his B.A. in English from Providence College and his J.D. from Boston College Law School. He also holds an MBA from the University of St. Thomas. His prior legal experience includes working at a law firm in Massachusetts and as a judicial clerk. He is admitted to practice both in Massachusetts and Minnesota. He is a member of the Minnesota State Bar Association and the Hennepin County Bar Associations.

 Associate editor

Prior to becoming associate editor, Barbara L. Jones was a contributing writer for Minnesota Lawyer for more than a year.

A 1982 graduate of William Mitchell College of Law, Jones practiced law in the private sector from 1983 to 1999. She focused primarily on family law, but also handled cases in a variety of other areas, including bankruptcy and civil litigation.

Jones is a member of the adjunct faculty at Hamline University School of Law and is co-chair of the Minnesota Women Lawyers communications committee. 

 Associate editor

Michelle Lore joined Minnesota Lawyer as an associate editor in March 2000.

Lore was previously engaged in the private practice of law in St. Paul, handling employee discrimination, workplace harassment and other employment-related matters. She has more than five years of experience handling employment claims, and also spent a year in general practice in Virginia, Minn.

Lore graduated cum laude from William Mitchell College of Law in 1994. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Mankato State University.

 Associate editor

Dan Heilman joined the staff of Minnesota Lawyer as a reporter and associate editor in January 2007.

Prior to that, he worked for nine years at MSP Communications in Minneapolis. He spent most of that time on ComputerUser magazine, eventually rising to the rank of editor-in-chief, a position he held for three years until the monthly technology magazine discontinued publication late in 2006. Before that, he was a reporter and editor for Minnesota Lawyer’s sister publication, Finance and Commerce, for five years.

Heilman has been a working journalist since the mid-1980s, and has contributed articles to dozens of publications. He received a BA in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 1985.

 Opinion editor

Sherri L. Knuth has written opinion digests for Minnesota Lawyer since the paper's inception in September 1997. For a year prior to that, she wrote opinion summaries for Finance and Commerce's Appellate Courts Edition - which was later incorporated into Minnesota Lawyer.

Knuth received her J.D. magna cum laude in 1983 from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign and then clerked for a federal district court judge in Illinois for two years.

After moving to Minnesota in 1986, Knuth was in private civil practice until 1991 with emphases in employment matters, environmental regulatory and litigated proceedings and environmentally related insurance law. She authored "Wetlands Regulation in Minnesota" (Minnesota Audubon Council, 1993) and articles for various legal publications. Knuth has been active in St. Paul city government at the community level and was co-chair of a committee that successfully petitioned for formation of a watershed district in her area of St. Paul.