J. James Cooper

Reed Smith LLP

Jim is a member of the Insurance Recovery and Shipping groups in Reed Smith’s Houston office. He has nearly 40 years of experience handling multimillion-dollar insurance coverage disputes through litigation or arbitration, many involving commercial property and business interruption losses, claims for D&O, professional liability, commercial general liability, builder’s risk, and pollution coverage, including the energy, manufacturing, construction, and chemical sectors.

Jim is a past chair of the Insurance Law Section of the State Bar of Texas and a current co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee. He was elected to membership in the American College of Coverage Counsel, a privilege bestowed on less than 500 attorneys nationwide. Jim has also been selected by his peers every year since 2006 for inclusion in the Texas Super Lawyers rankings in the area of insurance coverage, and recognized for the 15th consecutive year as one of the nation’s top insurance coverage lawyers by Chambers USA. He has received a top ranking of “Band 1” for Insurance in Texas by Chambers USA since 2016. Jim was also selected by Best Lawyers in America© as its 2019 Houston “Lawyer of the Year” for his work in Insurance Law.

Jim has previously served as co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee’s Annual Conference, as well as the ABA’s Emerging Insurance Coverage Issues and Products Liability Insurance Coverage subcommittees. He also served as the course director for the 2014 State Bar of Texas Advanced Insurance Law Course. He is a former chair of the Houston Bar Association’s Historical and Professionalism committees, and was presented with President’s Awards in 2010 and 2013 in recognition of his service on those committees. Jim also received the prestigious Jim D. Bowmer Professionalism Award from the College of the State Bar of Texas in 2012.

Jim served as a contributing editor for the Lexis/Nexis Texas Annotated Insurance Code from 2006 to 2014. He has co-authored a chapter on handling complex insurance coverage matters in Inside The Minds: Legal Strategies For The Insurance Industry, published by Aspatore Books. Jim has also authored insurance coverage articles for the Journal of Texas Insurance Law, the University of Houston Int'l Law Journal, and the Michigan Bar Journal.