Standing on the Shoulders of Giants – An Interview With Coleman Cowan
Coleman Cowan
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
– Isaac Newton
Simply put, the people who inspire you expand your perspective. To stand on the shoulders of giants is to position yourself in a state where you are resting on their strength.
Giants make it possible not only to see, but to see anew.
By leaning on others, your horizons widen, and as a result, you grow as a person. Whether the people who inspire you are heroes from the past or in the present, learning from them can lead you to new revelations. These revelations can, in turn, create a sense of wonder. Often, wonder multiplies into gratitude, and gratitude generates the hope that you can help others.
When you share your newfound perspective, you can make it possible for someone else to see what you have seen. In other words, you can become a giant, too – one who makes it possible for others to gain a new vision for themselves.
Sometimes you stand on the shoulders of giants. Other times, they stand beside you, ready to offer support, advice and encouragement.
Coleman Cowan, a partner with James Scott Farrin, has met many giants in his life. He has worked in two fields, both the law and journalism. He began his career as an attorney and practiced for ten years before a life-altering event in 1999 caused him to reassess not only his profession and priorities but his overall perspective on life.
Now, throughout his various roles as attorney, volunteer, writer, husband and father, Cowan lives out of this sense of purpose, to share his story so that others can see their own stories in a new way.
The moment that redefined his perspective and what followed is the topic of his recent presentation to the Family Law Section titled “Hardwired: What Our Experiences Can Teach Us About Managing Stress and Anxiety.” Cowan gave this talk during the 2024 Family Law Section CLE program, Phone-A-Friend, held on September 13.
Following his talk, we spoke about his presentation, the pivotal moments in his life, and the giants who influenced him.
In his presentation, Cowan describes how his near-death experience, and everything that transpired next, reshaped his view of the world. Six years after that life-altering moment, Cowan realized he wanted to try his hand at a career in journalism. He spent the next ten years honing his craft. He joined BusinessWeek Magazine as a writer before moving to New York City for a master’s program at Columbia University, where he studied investigative journalism.
After his master’s project was discovered by 60 Minutes, he joined as an entry-level broadcast associate and became an associate producer (2007-2014) and producer (2014-2017). Cowan traveled around the world, interviewed countless individuals and won numerous awards, including an Emmy. In 2018, he returned to North Carolina and to a role as a litigation attorney.
This fall, in addition to his work as an attorney, Cowan joined Duke University School of Law as a senior lecturing fellow, where he is teaching a course in pre-trial litigation. Outside of work, he serves as the chair of the NCBA Professional Vitality Committee. Cowan also serves on the Local Civil Rules Committee for the Middle District of North Carolina.
“What I’m trying to do is share some of the things I learned as a journalist with young lawyers, old lawyers, and whoever is interested in listening to me, so they can benefit from what I’ve learned without having to take a twelve-year detour in their career like I did.”
His experience on that night in 1999 changed his outlook. Who he is today has also been shaped by the giants in his life who poured into him. In our conversation, we spoke about both of those things: the turning point, and the people who have had an influence on him both before and after it.
Coleman Cowan and Donald Cowan Jr. photographed at Cowan’s graduation ceremony from Wake Forest University School of Law in May 1995.
What happened to change the course of his life so drastically?
Cowan details the events of that night in his presentation. On February 24, 1999, he was a litigation attorney. On that night, he was in Durham, working as a defense attorney taking a doctor’s deposition. As he shares in his talk, he did something he had done many times before: after the deposition, he and the plaintiff’s attorney, John Watson, stopped in the parking lot to talk about the deposition.
While they were talking, Cowan saw a young man in the parking lot.
“The young man in the back of the parking lot didn’t register with me – until he wasn’t in the back of the parking lot anymore. He was right in front of us,” said Cowan.
Cowan couldn’t have known what would happen next. The young man had a gun in his hand.
When Cowan reached in his coat pocket to hand the young man his wallet, the young man shot Cowan through the arm and Watson in the abdomen. Cowan says fight or flight took over, and assuming that Watson had died, he ran away as fast as he could. He reached a fire station, where they rushed him to Durham Regional Hospital.
There, as he was waiting to be seen, he learned that Watson had survived and was going into surgery. At that point, a resident arrived to explain how they would treat his arm. He remembers interrupting the resident’s detailed recitation with a simple inquiry: “Can you rebuild it? Do you have the technology? Can you make me better, stronger, faster?”
At this point, Cowan’s talk cuts to a clip from the Six Million Dollar Man, and the audience laughs. As Cowan goes on to say, although the resident didn’t get the joke, some of the other hospital staff did. Cowan felt better than before because he knew that no matter what had happened, his sense of humor was intact.
Following surgery, he may not have become the bionic man, but a change had occurred inside him. For one thing, a titanium plate was placed into his arm, along with screws, and for six months, he was recovering from the injury. As his body healed, he found himself thinking through large questions about what truly mattered.
“That experience reminded me of some very basic things, like how important today is and the cliché tomorrow might not come. These are all things that I think everybody knows and recognizes. But we get so busy we don’t really think about that on a day-to-day basis. I certainly didn’t, and I was so busy that I was just struggling to get by and keep my head above water.
“But that shooting forced me to stop to reevaluate where I was and where I wanted to be, and to appreciate everything that I have, the opportunities that I have. On a very basic level it made me appreciate being able to breathe, think, walk, talk – just be alive.”
Following his recovery, he returned to the law for six years as a plaintiff’s attorney. But in March of 2005, he experienced another moment of revelation – this time because of a question posed to him. As he narrates in his presentation, he was watching UNC play in the championship game of the ACC basketball tournament with his then-girlfriend, now wife, Angie.
When the game ended, he recalls Angie turning to him and asking, “Where are you?”
Although he was physically present watching the game, mentally, his mind was turning over everything he had to do at work.
At that point, he realized something in his life needed to change: he had gone back to a pattern of practicing law that wasn’t conducive to his well-being.
In our conversation, Cowan speaks about this key season in his life. Although his friends and colleagues didn’t understand this decision to walk away from the law, his immediate family stood by him.
He remembers how his father, J. Donald Cowan Jr., and his mother, Sarah Cowan, were especially encouraging during this season.
“My dad was the reason I wanted to be a lawyer. And he and my mom were the two people who did not tell me I was crazy when I decided I was going to stop practicing law. All my partners told me I was crazy. My friends told me I was crazy. But my dad and my mom said, ‘I think you’re thinking about it the right way.’ They were very supportive.
“And then a dozen years later, when I was contemplating getting out of journalism and coming back to North Carolina and practicing law again, my parents were again some of the few people who didn’t tell me I was crazy.”
It meant the world to him to feel this support when he needed it the most. Because he knows what it is like to have people he was able to turn to, he considers it part of his calling to speak to other attorneys, to serve as a mentor and to give back to the legal community.
Tim Medvetz and Cowan, pictured at Naval Medical Center San Diego, May 2013.
To hear the full story of how he transitioned fields to journalism, check out his talk, in which he speaks about some of the notable individuals he interviewed at 60 Minutes – people who taught him significant life lessons applicable to a career in the law.
One of those individuals is Tim Medvetz, a former Hells Angels Motorcycle Club member, who in 2001, was seriously injured from a motorcycle accident. He underwent multiple surgeries to his foot, back and skull. After the accident, he went through a long period of recovery and learned to walk again.
A year later, Medvetz read “Into Thin Air,” and one month after, traveled to Nepal to climb Mount Everest. In 2007, after watching a news program on disabled veterans, Medvetz decided he wanted to take wounded amputee veterans with him to climb not just Mount Everest but the Seven Summits.
In working on this story, Cowan met Sargeant Isaac Blunt, a veteran who lost both of his legs from an IED in Helmand Province. Cowan spoke with Blunt in the hospital after the accident. One year after his injury, Cowan watched as Blunt, with Medvetz beside him, climbed one of the Seven Summits of the World.
From Blunt and other military veterans like him, Cowan says he gleaned an important lesson: anything is possible.
Sergeant Isaac Blunt reaches the peak of Mt. Kosciuszko in June 2013.
Beyond the amazing individuals he interviewed while working at 60 Minutes, Cowan has been influenced by personal giants in his life.
Who are some of those other giants?
Of those three special people, he lists his father first. Cowan’s dad is one giant in his life who inspired him in many ways. Donald J. Cowan Jr. practiced law for 43 years. Cowan Jr. was a litigator who was experienced in antitrust, intellectual property and criminal law. He served as an adjunct professor of trial practice at Duke University School of Law.
Cowan Jr. also served as president of the NCBA from 1992-93.
Cowan’s father invested in his clients and in others in the profession, and through his example, Cowan was inspired to be a model to others. In 2019, Cowan Jr. passed away.
Reflecting on his dad, Cowan speaks with admiration for the person he was. After his father’s death, Cowan sought to capture what his father meant to him in words by writing his father’s obituary.
“It was incredibly difficult to write, but it tells the story of his life and is probably the single piece of writing I’m most proud of,” said Cowan.
The piece reflects Cowan Jr.’s legacy to the legal community and to his family.
Donald Cowan Jr. teaching an NCBA CLE in the 1980s.
Another hero in Cowan’s life is Charley Rose, one of his professors in law school at Wake Forest University School of Law. Cowan says Rose was instrumental in helping Cowan learn to digest complex legal concepts, including how Cowan organized them and thought about them.
The third person he names is Judge Norwood Carlton Tilley, Jr., a federal judge for the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Cowan’s first role out of law school was serving as a law clerk for Judge Tilley. Judge Tilley taught Cowan about civility, professionalism and how to be an effective advocate while maintaining both of those values.
“It’s something that sounded so simple to me, and I really didn’t know anything different, but once I got into the practice of law, I realized there are people who aren’t civil. There are people who aren’t professional.
“And those lessons I learned from Judge Tilley then became that much more important – to be civil, to be professional, to treat others that way and share that with other young attorneys, so they learn not to attack other attorneys because that’s what they see other people doing.”
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From each of these three people, Cowan gleaned principles he continues to reflect on – principles he hopes to impart to others in the profession.
“Mentoring young attorneys and law students is important for me because of the people I encountered who are mentors to me, who shaped the way I think about things, who shaped who I became and have had a lifelong impact on my career,” said Cowan.
“If I can give back a fraction of what I learned from my dad, from Professor Rose or from Judge Tilley, that would be rewarding to me. What I’m trying to do is give back to others and help shape their careers the way that others helped me and shaped my career.”
His heroes have impacted his life; another important factor in his professional growth was his writing career. Everything he learned from his role as a writer and producer sharpened the skills he would use once more when he returned to the law in 2018.
“I have the benefit of being a professionally trained writer, and I’ve also had the benefit of working with some of the best journalists in the business at 60 Minutes. I’ve learned a lot from them that I take into my practice,” said Cowan.
His career as a writer involved many moments of discovery. Through these moments, he now sees writing in a way that is different from how he viewed it when he began his career as an attorney.
As part of his work on the Heroes Project story, Cowan traveled to Australia. He is shown here with Medvetz, Blunt, and the 60 Minutes Crew, June 2013.
What are some of the most important takeaways from his writing career?
“One of the greatest – and most difficult – things I learned as a journalist is how to not write like a lawyer. That is a problem I think just about every lawyer has, especially young lawyers coming out of law school. They write like the old cases that they’ve spent three years reading in law school.
“And a lot of what I do with our young attorneys and my law students at Duke is I try to break them out of that mold and tell them, ‘Think like a lawyer, but write like a person.’ And make it understandable. I read a lot of legal writing that doesn’t sound like a human wrote it. It just doesn’t make sense.”
If writing like a person is the goal, it can help to read writers who are masters at sounding clear, approachable and real.
Who are Cowan’s writing giants?
There are two who stand above the rest. The first is Steve Kroft, a former correspondent at 60 Minutes who retired in 2019. Cowan, who produced stories for Kroft, describes him as an incredible journalist and storyteller.
Kroft’s advice has stayed with him.
“He had a very unique ability to tell a good story very, very simply,” said Cowan. When I write, I hear Steve’s voice in my head telling me to keep things simple. Keep it understandable. Make words fit together. Make sentences fit together. Make stories flow and have an arc to them.”
A second literary influence is author Hunter S. Thompson. Cowan says it’s Thompson’s voice he hears when he is writing non-legal pieces, such as a blog post or an article for NC Lawyer Magazine.
“When you write something for publication, it’s a one-way process. You’re writing, and then you put it out there, and people are reading it and consuming it. But Hunter Thompson had a unique way of writing that made it almost feel like as a reader, you’re having a conversation with him. He’s posing questions. He’s answering questions. He’s getting inside your head.”
Cowan, son Julian and wife Angie pictured in Berlin in 2024.
Cowan’s personal giants are pivotal to his perspective, and his writing giants have guided his mastery of the craft. There are also individuals he wishes he could have met, but didn’t have the chance to.
If he could interview anyone, who would he speak with, and why?
As an athlete and musician who came of age in 1970s and ‘80s, Cowan puts three people on his list: one athlete, and two musicians. The first is Steve Prefontaine, a runner for the University of Oregon, who died in 1975.
“He would have been a fascinating person to spend time with because of his philosophy on running and competing. He antagonized his coach at the University of Oregon, Bill Bowerman, because he would not run strategically. He’s famously quoted for saying, ‘I don’t run to see who’s the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts.’ I feel like in order to succeed, we have to be willing to suffer. I would love to have been able to get inside Prefontaine’s head to understand his unique ability to suffer to succeed.”
The next two people are Eddie Van Halen and Neil Peart.
“Eddie Van Halen is the reason that I and thousands of others picked up the guitar as teenagers. I would have loved to have spent time talking with him about how he created music which appeared to flow so naturally through him.
“Neil Peart was a similarly talented musician, and an even better songwriter. I would have loved to have talked with him about his songwriting process.
“I’ve been fortunate that our son, Julian, shares my interest in music and is becoming quite a talented musician. From his studio in our house, I get to hear much of the soundtrack of my youth.”
As Cowan reflects on the people who are important to him, he thinks about his son. Cowan has passed on his appreciation for music to Julian, and Julian’s love for music is evident, whether he is listening to it or performing it. Like Cowan, Julian demonstrates his passion through action – by sharing this love for music with others, both at home or on the stage.
Music is more than something they can talk about – it is something that father and son can enjoy together. They see several rock shows every year, most recently Megadeth in September.
Cowan and Julian attended a Megadeth concert in 2024.
Beyond these personal heroes, there are heroes inside the bar association who helped Cowan to discover how to use his unique talents to better the profession.
One of those individuals is Past President Mark Holt. After Cowan returned to an attorney role in 2018, he hoped to get involved with the bar association and with giving back to others in his field. Cowan describes meeting with Holt over coffee to talk about what Cowan wanted to do.
He asked Holt for advice.
“Mark said, you know, there’s this new committee that’s called the Professional Vitality Committee. It’s a mouthful, but maybe you want to take a look at that and see if that’s something that might interest you.”
The committee was exactly what Cowan was looking for because it provided a way to practically address some of the ideas that he had been thinking about since he began his career. It also provided avenues to connect with other attorneys and to work together to create resources for the good of the profession.
When he got involved, Erna Womble, who he had previously worked with at Womble Carlyle, was serving as the chair. It was the perfect place for him.
“Everything that they were doing in terms of the difficulties we all face practicing law was exactly what I’ve experienced and things that I’ve been thinking about,” he said.
“One of the reasons I left practicing law many, many years ago was there was a lot of stress and anxiety that got to be a bit much for me and made me want to explore other things, which I did. Then, when I came back, I was a better storyteller, but the stress and anxiety was all still there, and I realized I needed a way to manage that.
“And the Professional Vitality Committee really struck a chord with me. It deals with a lot of the issues I struggled with, like managing stress and anxiety in what can be an adversarial profession. We don’t have solutions to everybody’s problems, but we have different ways of thinking about things and addressing issues that many of us face practicing law.”
Cowan teaches a CLE at the NC Bar Center in Cary, 2019.
Cowan, who has served as chair of the committee since 2022, speaks of some of the projects he has worked on with the committee. He has written blog posts, which include Objectivity, A Note To My Younger Self, and A Gift, and an NC Lawyer Magazine article titled My Blackboard Mind. He has also spoken at several CLEs, including as a keynote speaker at the first seminar organized by the committee.
The committee also offered an avenue to connect with other heroes in the bar who wanted to help others. This year, the committee is working on creating a resource for attorneys to access to talk through challenges they face in their practice.
Cowan is thrilled to be able to serve others because he is grateful – grateful to use his gifts, to be in this profession, and to be alive.
“My wife says I look for too many opportunities sometimes, and I have a hard time saying no, but it’s important for me to give back what was given to me, and I find it to be a very rewarding experience.
“When I speak or write, if I express something which resonates with someone and helps them get through a challenge they may be facing, that’s the rewarding feeling that drives me to keep giving back.”
Ultimately, serving others is his way of paying it forward – of being a giant to others, like so many have been to him.
“If I’m able to share something that I’ve experienced or a perspective on something that will help somebody else, I’d like to think I’m doing good in the world.”
Jessica Junqueira is communications manager for the North Carolina Bar Association.