Gary I. Cohen is one of the nation’s premier independent trial attorneys practicing divorce law today. A driven, complex – indeed, fascinating – personality, the 63-year-old Cohen could have eased up a long time ago, to bask in a career record most lawyers would envy. A precocious scholar throughout his youth (“If you looked in the dictionary under ‘nerd’ you’d have found my photo”) Cohen was recruited by the top law firms in the country as an anti-trust lawyer. Instead he returned home to Connecticut to later become a solo practitioner, crafting a career of courtroom achievements. Cohen is “the best divorce trial attorney in the state, without a close second,” says a former client, a sentiment echoed even by some rivals. Growing up in New Haven, Cohen recalled working hard as a 7-year-old spackler prepping walls for his father, a housepainter. “It taught me I’d better not be washing my hands with turpentine the rest of my life. My family had a lot of tough times.” His mother impressed on him that “education was a ticket to a better life,” and “I knew from the first day of school that I was smart.” Some elite institutions thought so too; both Yale and Harvard offered scholarships. He enrolled at Yale in his hometown. “I never knew there were inner courtyards behind those stone walls.” He kept working as night watchman and dishwasher, a world away from his more-privileged classmates. While in UVA law school Cohen’s mother passed away, robbing him of his plan to give her the security he vowed to provide her. He turned down offers from such firms as Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (where he’d interned) and Hogan & Hartson to return to Connecticut, practicing anti-trust for a year with a Norwich-based firm. “I wanted to be a country lawyer. I didn’t think New York City was for me.” The Norwich firm tossed the young Cohen an anti-trust case his superiors thought he could handle because of his work as an articles editor of the Virginia Law Review. The courtroom work enthralled him. “I got hooked on litigation. I never looked back.” For a few years, after a merger of firms, Cohen found himself “sitting in meetings talking about whether or not to buy laser printers.” With little taste for committees, he went out on his own again in 1985, already established as a general litigator – and divorce lawyer. In short order the elite of already-elite Fairfield County were retaining Cohen for their potential courtroom showdowns against their one-time spouses. A rival says he “has an innate ability to feel the pulse of the courtroom.” Today he’s sought sometimes just to conflict him out of a case. “There’s no question I’m a deterrent (to litigation) – I don’t blink.” His typical retainer fee: $25,000, and even then he is selective. “At this stage of my career I don’t take every case. Sometimes it’s just a matter of liking the people I represent.” Many are referred to him by lawyers unwilling to litigate. His Greenwich office today has two additional attorneys and a support staff of seven. With his downtime (a rarity: his Blackberry is always buzzing), Cohen enjoys travel, film and the theater, and “anything to do with people.” One client says Cohen gave him, at his settlement, a rare pen from Cohen’s collection of writing instruments. His wife, Susanne Brody, is a federal criminal defender practicing in White Plains. They live in Greenwich. Cohen says he has few plans to slow down: “They are going to have to take me out feet-first.”