By AUBRIE GEORGE | The Moorestown Sun
Moorestown resident Scott Cooper is a father of two and an active member of the community, who hopes his position as 2010 chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association will help bridge the gap on regional issues and benefit local residents.
At age 44, Cooper is one of the youngest chancellors the association has ever had and is also the only chancellor known to live in New Jersey and work in Philadelphia.
Born in Hawaii, Cooper grew up in a town just outside of Denver, Colo., and made his way east when he attended Vassar College where he had a dual major in economics and political science. In between law school and college, Cooper worked briefly on Capitol Hill but eventually moved to Pennsylvania before attending Temple University for law school.
His wife, Karen, is from New Jersey and the two made their way to Moorestown to settle with their family in the fall of 2001. They picked Moorestown, Cooper said, because of the outstanding school district.
“We already had one child and we knew we were probably going to have another,” he said. “It has a great reputation, obviously, and Moorestown is really just a nice place to live.”
Both of Cooper’s children, Amanda, 9, and Collin, 6, both attend Moorestown public schools. Cooper is active in coaching the sports that his children are involved with and he, himself, is captain of a local over-35 men’s soccer team called The Red United.
“That’s something I do in town, which is a lot of fun and it connects me to the community,” Cooper said.
This family man and successful attorney also finds time to be involved in local government as well as a member of the township’s Recreation Advisory Committee, Ethics Committee and also as a member of the Burlington County Republican Committee.
Cooper has practiced law since 1992 and has been a partner at Philadelphia-based form Blank Rome, LLP since 1999. His practices involve litigation and business counseling. He is one of Blank Rome’s leading employment law litigators and proactively advises business and government clients on deals and contracting, according to his biography from the Philadelphia Bar Association.
The elected position of chancellor, Cooper said, basically names him as the 2010 president of the Philadelphia Bar Association.
“It’s just an old title that really means president,” Cooper said.
As chancellor, Cooper will serve as spokesperson for the entire association, which, he said, consists of about 13,000 members. In addition, he said, his job is to set the agenda for the organization for the year that he serves in office.
As Chancellor, Cooper has an extensive list of goals, but some of the things he wants to focus on, he hopes, will have a benefit at a regional level.
“I’m going to try to focus the bar on improving our strategic partnerships to help the lawyers in the city and, really, in the region in dealing with the economy” he said.
Cooper said he hopes a regional approach will involve those in Burlington County as well as in the city.
“One of the things I’m going to try to get us to look at, in Philadelphia, is more of a regional approach and the region obviously includes Burlington County,” Cooper said. “We have a lot of people that live in Moorestown that either work in Philadelphia or have businesses or customers in Philadelphia, so I really see them as being very connected.”
Cooper said that because he works in Philadelphia and lives in New Jersey, he might have a slightly unique perspective as chancellor.
“If any lawyer is going to have a chance to be credible on some of these regional issues, I think you have to have a foot in both places,” Cooper, who also has a license to practice law in New Jersey, said. “The nice part will be sort of bridging that gap in that I’m not tying to guess what its like in another place. I live there and then I come to work here.”
For instance, he said, a difference in the way the two states select judges is one example of something that can be learned from comparing systems in the two states.
“Right there you have two very different court systems that have advantages and disadvantages and that I think you can learn from the other about. That’s just one example,” he said.
Cooper’s goals for the coming year are also green, he said.
“I’m also going to have a fairly significant program aimed at trying to help us push some of the green initiatives both at the bar and at the member law firms and also in the courts,” Cooper said.
The Philadelphia Bar Association is lead by a Board of Governors that is headed by a chancellor, a chancellor-elect and a vice chancellor. Leaders are elected only once and begin as vice chancellor and eventually move up to chancellor, Cooper said.
Cooper was elected to vice chancellor in 2007 and currently serves as chancellor-elect until his term officially begins on Jan. 1.
On Tuesday, Dec. 8, Cooper will be welcomed to office at the association’s annual meeting and luncheon at noon at the Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue, located at Broad and Walnut streets in Philadelphia.
There, Cooper will give his inaugural address and the Philadelphia Bar Association will also hold its annual election of bar officers and members of the Board of Governors. Cooper said he expects that a number of Moorestonians, who he said have all been supportive, will be in attendance. Tickets for the event are $55 for members and $60 for non-members.
For more information or to register for the event visit www.philadelphiabar.org.
