2004 GREAT WOMEN OF GAMING
Proven leader

Laura McAllister Cox

Chief Legal & Gaming Compliance Officer
GPI Partners International Corporation

 

Laura McAllister Cox is a good lawyer. She is so good that her client, Paul-Son Gaming, now Gaming Partners International Corporation (GPI), hired her away from her longtime practice at Atlantic City's Cooper Levenson law firm in late 2003. McAllister Cox joined GPI to undertake a new position as chief legal & gaming compliance officer.

The move followed years of experience as an associate attorney and later a partner at Cooper Levenson in their Casino Law Department. After joining the firm in 1987, McAllister Cox developed an expertise in casino regulatory compliance and international licensing. She designed the firm's multi-jurisdictional licensing program, drafted the proposed New Jersey regulations for several table games and served as a consultant for the Virgin Islands Casino Control Commission.

McAllister Cox has the advantage of knowing the casino industry both as an attorney and as a former employee. In the early 1980s, she worked as an assistant pit clerk supervisor at the Playboy Hotel and Casino, which was later Atlantis and Trump World's Fair, demolished a few years ago.

However, law school beckoned, and McAllister Cox graduated with honors from Rutgers University's Law School in Camden, New Jersey in 1987. During those years she also worked as a legal intern for the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office in southern New Jersey.

McAllister was no stranger to the law since both her father and stepmother were lawyers. For each of them it was a second career. "My dad was an Episcopal priest and changed career direction by going to law school when I was 10. My stepmother attended law school immediately thereafter. So, I lived with law students for the six years before going to college at the University of Tennessee," she says.

When she joined Cooper Levenson (formerly Cooper Perskie April Niedelman Wagenheim and Levenson), McAllister Cox worked as a litigator, and found that her knowledge of internal gaming operations and regulations gave her great background in representing local casino properties in court.

As the gaming industry began to grow in the early 1990s, McAllister Cox recognized the huge opportunities. She says, "With the early riverboat growth in Mississippi, Iowa and other states, I realized that we could perform a consolidated service for many companies. I approached my mentor, Lloyd Levenson and our then senior partner, Jim Cooper, and suggested we develop a 'onestop shop' that could deal with numerous multi-jurisdictional compliance and licensing issues."

Throughout the last decade, the firm added several specialists in various fields of gaming law, but McAllister Cox became expert in compliance and regulatory licensing. "Other firms and companies attempted to recruit me over the last decade, but I couldn't reject the offer from Gerard Charlier in 2003," she says. "I met Gerard when I began representing B & G (Bourgogne et Grasset) in 1997. I worked with B & G through the merger with Bud Jones in 2000, and remained through the mergers between Paul-Son and B & G in 2002.

"By then their work represented 70 percent of my client list. I believed my workload would lessen with the mergers, but the opposite held true. One of the greatest compliments of my career came from Gerard when he said that the personal trust they had in me motivated them to ask me to work exclusively for them."

McAllister Cox claims that at GPI, an employee's gender is irrelevant. Two of the three of the corporate officers are women.

"GPI's principals, who hail from France and the US, have an attitude that is very welcoming to women. It is less of an issue within the corporate structure than most American companies. It is quite different because to them a handshake still has meaning. Their concept of honor in the workplace remains paramount.

"I really appreciate the multi-cultural aspects of the position. I deal with all legal areas, including SEC issues. There is also the international twist because of our facilities in France and Mexico. It is a real education for me since I often travel with investigators who are looking at our company. This helps them bridge the cultural differences in how business is done in other countries," McAllister Cox says.

The adjustments to the job have all been worth it for McAllister Cox. Based in Atlantic City, she travels to the North American corporate headquarters in Las Vegas every month. McAllister Cox also serves on the board of trustees of the International Association of Gaming Attorneys (IAGA).

She leads a hectic life as the mother of two children—a 16-year-old daughter, Jillian, and a five-year-old son, Ethan. McAllister Cox's husband, Patrick Cox, is also an attorney who has a similar position with the trade association representing New Jersey's automotive retailers.

Laura McAllister Cox thrives on the activity and would hope that all women rising in the executive ranks of their companies would too. "I'm challenged by the need to multi-task, and I'm pleased to be able to maintain balance at a high level in all that I do," she says.


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