Jack E. Cohoon

Jack Cohoon has spent twenty years representing people—from frontline workers to professionals and executives—in employment disputes and the fights that surround them: unlawful termination, discrimination, retaliation, unpaid wages, whistleblower claims, noncompete defense, occupational licensing, and civil rights matters against public agencies. He founded Cohoon Employment Law, LLC to keep doing exactly that.

That work began at South Carolina Legal Services, where Jack started his career after graduating from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 2006. Over nearly fourteen years there, he represented low-income workers across the state, ultimately serving as Senior Litigation Attorney and head of the organization’s Employment Law Unit. He led a statewide effort to fight unpaid wages, discrimination, benefits denials, and barriers to employment—and built legal clinic models, including a Criminal Record Workshop and Driver’s License Clinic, that are still used across South Carolina today.

In 2020, Jack became a partner at Burnette Shutt & McDaniel, P.A., one of South Carolina’s premier civil rights and employment firms, where he represented employees in trial and appellate courts and before administrative agencies in cases involving discrimination, retaliation, whistleblowing, wage and hour violations, restrictive covenants, and executive employment matters. His practice included high-profile impact litigation enforcing South Carolina’s open-government, ethics, and whistleblower laws.

Jack’s results speak to that experience. He obtained a declaratory judgment establishing that a state agency violated the Freedom of Information Act and that its vote to fire its director was void—recovering wages, attorney’s fees, and a substantial defamation settlement for his client. He won a Rehabilitation Act case for a disabled veteran denied accommodations by a federal agency, recovering $200,000 and restoring his client’s eligibility for federal employment. He has secured significant settlements in race discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, and federal-sector cases. (Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee future outcomes.)

Jack’s peers have recognized that work. He has been listed in Best Lawyers in America for Labor and Employment Litigation every year since 2022, holds Martindale-Hubbell’s AV Preeminent peer-review rating and Platinum Client Champion award, and has been named to the Legal Elite of the Midlands in employment law annually since 2021. He currently chairs the South Carolina Bar’s Employment and Labor Law Section, where he has served in Executive Committee leadership since 2020, and he co-authored the unemployment compensation chapter of Labor and Employment Law for South Carolina Lawyers (5th ed., S.C. Bar 2024). He is a frequent CLE presenter on workplace free speech, wrongful termination, and wage payment law, and his cases have been covered by The Guardian, USA Today, Reuters, Yumiuri Shimbun, The State, and The Post and Courier.

Outside the office, Jack is a longtime Scouting America volunteer — recognized as the Indian Waters Council’s Alumnus of the Year in 2024 — and has served on the boards of nonprofits serving homeless families and underserved communities. He received the Richland County Bar Association’s Civic Star Award in 2021 for his service to the community.

Jack lives with his family in Lexington and practices throughout South Carolina from his office in West Columbia.