Shannan Higgins

Shannan serves as pro bono counsel for Cooley and works with the pro bono team to develop and manage the firm’s pro bono practice. She focuses on transactional matters for nonprofits and low-income entrepreneurs. In addition to working directly with Cooley’s pro bono clients, she collaborates with lawyers across the firm to ensure they have the skills and resources needed to take on pro bono transactional projects. Shannan is committed to leveraging Cooley’s immense talent pool to provide exceptional legal services in the pro bono transactional space, while at the same time providing Cooley’s lawyers with meaningful opportunities to develop professionally.

Before joining the pro bono team, Shannan was special counsel in Cooley’s technology transactions and trademark, copyright and advertising practice groups, where she advised business and nonprofit clients, at all stages of their life cycles, on commercial and intellectual property matters across a wide array of industries – including edtech, consumer products, advertising, media, digital health, Big Data, software, and manufacturing and supply chain.

Shannan’s career includes serving as deputy assistant general counsel of regulatory services for the US Department of Education for eight years, including one year as acting assistant general counsel of regulatory services. During her tenure at the Department of Education, she worked with a diverse group of stakeholders – often with competing policy objectives – to solve complex problems across a range of programmatic areas, including elementary and secondary education, higher education, federal student aid, special education and rehabilitative services, student records and privacy.

Shannan also is an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado’s School of Law, where she teaches a course on transactional drafting.