Luke Bierman

Luke Bierman is of counsel to Cohen Milstein, and adviser to the Ethics and Fiduciary Counseling and Securities Litigation & Investor Protection practices. He counsels pension funds and public entities on fiduciary, ethics, governance, and compliance issues.  

Luke joined Cohen Milstein in 2011, bringing with him a singular perspective and substantive experience as in-house general counsel to one of the largest public pension funds in the country, appointments to state task forces to review the state code of judicial ethics and professionalism, and a scholarly and academic background as the Dean and Professor of Law at a law school twice recognized as among the most innovative in the world. His experience provides him with a unique context for assisting public pension funds at critical and challenging times for those funds, and to offer collaborative and creative solutions.   

Luke served from 2007 to 2010 as General Counsel for the Office of the New York State Comptroller, the sole trustee of the state’s then $160 billion pension fund and the state’s chief fiscal officer for the state of New York’s then $160 billion budget. This was when the Office of the Comptroller faced unprecedented challenges including an international placement agent scandal and the Great Recession. Luke was the third ranking official in an agency of 2,500 employees managing a legal staff that included 100 staff with 55 attorneys and was responsible for legal advice and counsel on all matters relating to the comptroller’s constitutional and statutory responsibilities, including fiduciary, governance, ethics, litigation, investment, pension benefits, state and municipal finance and legislative matters. He also managed the 35 outside law firms that represented the Comptroller in litigation and transactional matters.   

Luke is a noted expert on legal ethics and professionalism, who has spoken and written widely about state courts and judicial conduct. He has served as a member of the North Carolina Commission on Administration of Law and Justice and on the North Carolina Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism. He was a member of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s Task Force on the Code of Judicial Conduct, which was assigned to review and suggest updates to the Court. He served on the ABA Presidential Task Force on Financing Legal Education and the ABA Presidential Task Force on Legal Access JobCorps. While working at the American Bar Association, Luke initiated the project that resulted in revisions to the Model Code of Judicial Conduct (2007), which many states have since adopted. He is Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at Elon University School of Law in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he, as Dean, spearheaded the creation of a unique law curriculum that blends the most important traditional elements of legal education with highly experiential learning in the nation’s first 2½ year JD program.   

Previously, Luke was the Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Distinguished Professor of Practice of Law at Northeastern University School of Law, where he was responsible for the Cooperative Legal Education Program. Earlier in his career, he served as a Fellow in Government Law and Policy at Albany Law School, Director of the Institute for Emerging Issues at North Carolina State University, where he held the rank of Associate Professor of Political Science; as founding director of the Justice Center and Special Assistant to the President of the American Bar Association; and as Visiting Specialist in Constitutional Law with the rank of Associate Professor at The Richard Stockton College (now University) of New Jersey. Luke also taught at Northwestern University School of Law, the University at Albany – State University of New York and Trinity College in Hartford. He also clerked for appellate judges in New York state shortly after law school. 

Luke is widely published for his legal analysis and is a frequent lecturer and commentator about corporate governance reform, fiduciary responsibility and ethics and justice reform. He was a member of the board of directors of the Council of Institutional Investors, where he co-chaired the policies committee. He has been an elected member of the American Law Institute since 2002.