James Jerome Carter is a nationally accomplished attorney, statesman, educator, and author. He is the Managing Partner of The Cochran Firm-Trials & Mass Torts and serves on The Cochran Firm’s national Board of Directors. He has dedicated his life to uplifting others and often states that he could never thank God enough for his Parents who gave him a solid foundation. Mr. Carter obtained his undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Howard University. He then graduated from Howard University School of Law, where he serves on the Board of Visitors. He is a formidable trial attorney who is responsible for recovering millions of dollars on behalf of clients, both personal and corporate, throughout the United States. His skillfully aggressive approach to the civil jury trial world gained him elite membership into the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum. He received a prized certification in Mass Tort Multi-District Litigation from the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke University School of Law and in 2021 earned a certificate in Governing for Nonprofit Excellence from Harvard Business School. He is one of seven Commissioners of The Port of New Orleans. For his accomplishments as an attorney and public servant, Grambling State University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Laws, and he received a second Honorary Doctorate from the University of New Orleans. Mr. Carter is admitted to practice in all Louisiana state courts, all Louisiana United States District Courts, the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals as well as the United States Supreme Court. He is the recipient of the prestigious 2022 Gertrude Rush and Power 50 awards from the National Bar Association and the 2022 Citizen of the Year Award from Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., Rho Phi Chapter. In 2021, 2022 and 2023, he was recognized by Law Dragon 500 for excellence and leadership in the legal profession. He is also the recipient of the 2021 New Orleans Chapter of the NAACP President’s Trailblazer Award and the 2021 Court Watch NOLA Lynne & Jerome Goldman Criminal Justice Reform Award. He has been recognized by New Orleans City Business Magazine as a Leader in Law in 2012 and 2016. He is a member of the Louisiana Bar Association, The National Trial Lawyers Top 100 (Executive Committee), National Bar Association (Life Member), and Litigation Counsel of America, limited to less than one-half of one percent of North American lawyers, judges and scholars. He has also served on the Louisiana Association for Justice Council of Directors.
He is a Civil Trial Litigation Adjunct Professor at Howard University School of Law and served as an Adjunct Trial Advocacy Professor at Tulane University School of Law. Mr. Carter served as immediate past Chairman of the University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors (ULS)-the governing body that provides policy guidance and fiscal oversight for nine public universities in Louisiana. One of his crowning achievements while serving on the ULS board was the establishment of the Reginald F. Lewis Educational Equity Initiative. He is a life member of 100 Black Men of America and a participated in a multi-year study of leadership in divided communities at the University of Oxford-Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict. He also took part in the government of France Foreign Visitors Program to foster cultural understanding. Mr. Carter has lectured in England, Canada, Panama, Jamaica, Dominican Republic and across the United States.
