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S5E06: An Introduction to Rutgers Law Associates, with Professor Andrew Rothman RLAW'90
16 Plays11 months ago
Professor of Law Andrew Rothman RLAW'90 joins Dean Bond to discuss his work with the Rutgers Law Associates.
The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige and reputation of a large, nationally known university combined with a personal, small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.rutgers.edu.
Production Manager: Shanida Carter
Series Producer & Editor: Nate Nakao
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Transcript
Introduction: Joanna Bond and Andy Rothman
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome to the Power of Attorney, Rutgers Law School's podcast. This is Joanna Bond. I'm the Dean of the Law School, and I'm here today with Andy Rothman, who's the Professor of Professional Practice and Managing Attorney of the Rutgers Law Associates. Welcome, Andy. Thank you, Joanna. It's nice to be with you.
00:00:30
Speaker
We always start these podcasts with the same question, which is, tell us your origin story.
Andy's Unconventional Path to Law
00:00:36
Speaker
We're particularly interested in how you arrived here at Rutgers Law School. Wow. Okay. Well, that takes me back a ways. I never anticipated being a lawyer. As a child, my plans were to be probably an engineer. I started my college as a math and physics major.
00:01:00
Speaker
Then I found the elective classes that I was taking were those that I really most enjoyed and that was English literature, early English literature, but especially art classes that I'd never taken before. By the time I graduated as an undergraduate, I had a degree in English and I went on to get a degree in Fine Arts as a sculptor.
00:01:24
Speaker
And that was my plan to be a teacher and a sculptor. I went on to graduate school in Fine Arts and launched a career as a sculptor. I ended up as a teacher of
00:01:45
Speaker
drawing and illustration serving as an administrator at Parsons School of Design. And that was where I was headed until I realized that Masters of Fine Arts wasn't going to get me everywhere I wanted to go. And it occurred to me that a JD
00:02:09
Speaker
might be a more interesting doctorate than dusting off Beowulf and doing a PhD in early English. Was there a particular aha moment for you when you realized law school might be a good alternative? Yeah, there was actually. At the time, my role was as Dean of Academic Affairs for Parsons, and one of the students
00:02:38
Speaker
was unhappy with the fact that he had determined that he had to be expelled from school. And so he sued us. And I was responsible for the expulsion. And my boss kind of foolishly said, well,
00:03:05
Speaker
Andy, you just called the lawyer. This is a good one for you to cut your teeth on. And I had no idea what I was doing. Did call the lawyer. We did manage to resolve the issue when the lawsuit went away. And I realized that I had never been so terrified in my life as to talk to this lawyer. My boss told me that it would be a lot cheaper just to get therapy, but I decided no, it would be a good idea to get a law degree so I don't have to be afraid of people anymore.
00:03:35
Speaker
That's a fantastic story.
Choosing Rutgers for Law School
00:03:38
Speaker
So what brought you to Rutgers specifically? So Rutgers has a terrific evening program and the evening program is absolutely as
00:03:57
Speaker
the same caliber, the same professors as the day program, but it's manageable while you're working full time. And I didn't leave Parsons. I was working at Parsons and able to go to law school at night. And I had fabulous support from my wife, who is also working full time. But we manage Rutgers at night with starting law school with a two year old and ending law school with a two year old.
00:04:27
Speaker
Wow, that's impressive. I am consistently impressed by our night students who do manage to fit law school in around their other commitments. And it's really an extraordinary way to have a legal education at the same time that you're employed or engaged in other responsibilities. So that's great to hear. And the people you meet in the evening program, because they are generally professionals,
00:04:56
Speaker
are often extraordinary. My study partners included the executive vice president of St. Barnabas Hospital, a vice president of Prudential. I thought I wasn't much of anything because I was just a dean of Parsons, but it was a remarkable group of people who are all figuring out how to do this and learn to become lawyers.
00:05:25
Speaker
Absolutely true. Well, let me ask you, let's do a softball round robin now. So these will be rapid fire. What's your favorite part about being a professor? Oh, the students. There's nothing better than counseling students and being able to watch them grow from just a student into a lawyer. Most of the courses I teach are advanced courses. I know I'm teaching first year.
00:05:54
Speaker
to watch their growth is most fulfilling and creative thing I've ever been involved with. That's saying a lot because I know you've been involved in a lot of creative enterprises. And I have to agree, it's incredibly gratifying to watch that development in our students. Okay, so favorite place to eat in Newark and Camden?
00:06:16
Speaker
favorite place local, right around the law school across the street, La Casina, a Cuban barbecue restaurant that's fabulous. Not still walking distance, but in the Ironbound district, Casa Basta, which is a Basque restaurant and is extraordinary. And Camden, I
00:06:39
Speaker
I really feel like a coffee bagger in Camden. I'm down two days a week, generally, but I'm in and I'm back out. The only restaurant that I've had any exposure to is the Victor right on the water, which is an easy walk. Right. Okay, that's great. And what about favorite places on those campuses? Understanding that you're probably more familiar with Newark's campus, but are there particular places that you enjoy spending time?
00:07:09
Speaker
Or not necessarily on campus, but in the city itself. Okay. Favorite place in the city of Newark is Branchbrook Park. You get on the light rail and it's three stops away. And it is the same landscape architecture, architects as created Central Park.
00:07:32
Speaker
with one of the most spectacular cathedrals in North America. And more cherry trees in Boston during the cherry season in Washington, D.C. That sounds incredibly beautiful. It is marvelous.
00:07:52
Speaker
When you're down by, you just keep walking down. The aquarium is also with an easy walk of the law school, but then across the street or across, yeah, across the street from the, or quite across the street, right next to the aquarium is the battleship, which is kind of fun to look at and look over to Delaware and just viewing Philadelphia on the other side. Beautiful place to walk.
00:08:20
Speaker
OK, that's great. Fantastic recommendations. Thank you. So let's switch gears a little bit. I want to ask you what advice you would give to students who may be interested in going to law school. Well, first advice I give them is that it is a commitment. This is a doctoral program. And it will absorb really almost all of your time.
00:08:50
Speaker
So your support network, whether it's your children, your parents, your spouse, your puppy, give them time and let them understand that you're going to be committed for the next few years. Get off social media because it's an incredible drain of your time and you really don't need to see the latest hack on Instagram. Um, and realize that you are going to be
00:09:18
Speaker
moving more slowly than you've ever read before. And that's okay, but you've got to give it the time. That's great advice. Great advice for all the students out there who may be considering law school.
Founding Rutgers Law Associates
00:09:32
Speaker
Now I want to move our conversation to Rutgers Law Associates, which I know is something near and dear to your heart. You developed and now manage the Rutgers Law Associates.
00:09:44
Speaker
It's a stellar and unique law practice that is within Rutgers Law School and has been since 2014. So how did this come to be and how does it work? Okay. The way it came to be was that when I left Rutgers Law School, I worked for a big firm and I found that there was no actual training to practice law and I had not had the
00:10:14
Speaker
experience of working in a clinic when I was in the law school. So I had no experience whatsoever. And honestly, I made a lot of mistakes and there was very, very little guidance, which is understandable because the practice is a running business. They are not an educational enterprise. And I learned and I started teaching more junior of my associates, what I had learned. Um,
00:10:43
Speaker
and thought that I should teach a course, just a simple course in civil practice. And so I asked if I could adjunct, and Wing-chan gave me that opportunity. And I realized that really wasn't enough time. I needed a year, a full-time year with people, actually doing it and supervising them. So I recommended, this was in 1996, I recommended
00:11:12
Speaker
through Rutgers that they consider something like what medical school has, a residency program that serves the public and serves graduates of law school as the transition year before going on to private practice. It required enormous commitment from Rutgers University because launching such a program was expensive,
00:11:42
Speaker
and challenging and new, but in 2013, well, in 1998, the faculty approved it in principle, but in 2013, the faculty approved it in action and the resources were available and we got started. It is not just available to Rutgers students, it's to any graduate of an ABA approved law school, and it's a one year
00:12:13
Speaker
full-time apprenticeship. Each of the fellows are by new court rule, permitted to practice law without direct supervision in court. My team of staff attorneys and I supervise all of their work
00:12:33
Speaker
until they are off in court. And it's a general practice law firm. So we do family law, we've done criminal defense matters, we've done some bankruptcies, we've done landlord tenant cases, anything for a client who meets our criteria, which is low or low moderate income, that we have the capacity to take. And the experiences
00:13:01
Speaker
Absolutely transformational. It sounds like an incredible experience for recent grads. So I know you've had, or Rutgers Law Associates, rather, has had recent victories. You want to tell us about one or two that stand out in your mind?
Significant Cases at Rutgers Law Associates
00:13:21
Speaker
Sure. We're on a list of law firms that the United States State Department
00:13:31
Speaker
has created to serve foreign nationals who was a biological parent of a child when the other parent has taken to the United States and is not returning to their home in the other country. It's a kind of akin to
00:13:59
Speaker
kidnapping in a way, because once the child is taken out of the home country, there would otherwise be no court that had the authority to send them back. And the parent from the home country might not have the resources to come to the new country in order to resolve the problem. We recently took one of these cases, represented a man from Ireland,
00:14:27
Speaker
His wife was a U.S. citizen, but they'd been married for 15 years. And she brought her sons to visit her parents for last Thanksgiving and then decided she was going to stay and not return to the kids. After three months of protracted pretrial, the mom and her parents
00:14:57
Speaker
finance the litigation with a big law firm representing her. Lots of discovery, depositions, experts, and so on. And on our side, we had one fellow who had less than a year of practical experience, also proposing experts, developing experts, and developing evidence. The case was ready for trial, and at that point,
00:15:27
Speaker
That fellow's one-year fellowship was over, and so a new fellow came in. And with two weeks preparation for going through the whole file, she tried the case, and the child will be on Saturday on a plane back to Ireland. It was a wonderful victory. Unbelievable. That's fantastic.
00:15:50
Speaker
And what an experience for that relatively new lawyer, recent graduate to have that kind of victory. It's just extraordinary. We have become one of the states who may be the biggest providers of legal services to victims of domestic violence, which are very quick proceedings. We've had several cases in the last couple of years where we only
00:16:20
Speaker
were contacted by the victim two days before her trial date. And complete preparation of evidence, possible witnesses, documentary evidence. And two days later, one of the fellows is in court trying the case. Wow, that's intense, but really an extraordinary learning experience. Then we've had some that are
00:16:50
Speaker
interesting stories, but not so successful. Under a grant we received recently, and which you now understand will be extended for the coming year, we represent pro bono people who use drugs who are probably completely out of the system. People who may be unhoused and are without resources
00:17:18
Speaker
We represented, um, we were directed by a social services organization to a man who had been using heroin. And, um, on the day that he used heroin in question, he recognized, or he thought he recognized that he was overdosing and that he was going to continue to use and to kill himself. And so he called 911.
00:17:46
Speaker
And he was picked up and brought to the local hospital. And the hospital at the hospital in the emergency room, he turned over to the hospital personnel, the drugs that he had remaining. Not sure how this happened, but the police heard of it. And without him knowing when he was in recovery,
00:18:15
Speaker
He was summoned and arrested for possession based on his turning over of the drugs. He represented him for eight months. New Jersey has become a very progressive state in recognizing that
Challenges in Drug-Related Cases
00:18:34
Speaker
drug use is a health issue, perhaps not a criminal matter.
00:18:43
Speaker
and that harm reduction should be the primary goal of the legislature. This, what we believe to have been lawful disposition of his drugs, ended up becoming a very, very, very hard fought pretrial and would have likely ended up
00:19:09
Speaker
before at least the appellate division or to the New Jersey Supreme Court when the prosecutor made an offer that as lawyers we had to convey a plea bargain. I remain convinced that had he not taken the plea, the case would have gone up and he would have gone free.
00:19:38
Speaker
That wasn't our choice. So it was overall a disappointing outcome from an objective standpoint, but our client was satisfied and that was our job. A great lesson though in professional responsibility for everybody.
00:19:53
Speaker
Absolutely. The responsibility to take that offer to the client and see what the client's reaction to it is. That's really interesting and also fascinating to know that the state of New Jersey is taking a more progressive stance on some of those drug-related cases. So I also know that there are other partnerships and organizations in the areas, in and around the law school. What are some of those partnerships
00:20:23
Speaker
with Rutgers Law Associates. So we have been, as I say, providing services to victims of domestic violence and other victims of crime. That is effectively in partnership with the Department of Justice, but with the Attorney General's Office.
00:20:53
Speaker
Rutgers Law Associates is a vendor to the Attorney General's office for providing services to these victims, including representing them in getting final restraining orders and representing them in
00:21:09
Speaker
Housing issues that might arise from their fleeing an abuser, sometimes employment issues, sometimes immigration issues. We have done visa applications under the statute that allows for visas for victims of crime.
00:21:33
Speaker
So that's a partnership, I would say, with the Attorney General's office. We also have worked with more local entities. The Newark Community Street Team is a nonprofit organization in Newark that is really, its mission is to end violence in some of the hot spots in certain sections of town.
00:22:03
Speaker
And we have provided services to the decarcerated population. People, when they come out of prison, have almost no opportunity. And having almost no opportunity, and generally a significant distrust of the legal system, they may spend the rest of their lives off the grid.
00:22:33
Speaker
outside of the law, helping them to find that the law can serve them and to renounce self-help methods to resolve disputes in the neighborhood, can save lives. And we have been doing that work for seven or eight years now. That's fantastic. That is truly transformative work.
Applying to Rutgers Law Associates
00:23:04
Speaker
And you mentioned earlier that Rutgers Law Associates is open to graduates, not just from Rutgers Law, but from other ABA approved law schools as well. So can you just say a few words about how interested law graduates can apply? Well, there is a platform that career development has, participates in.
00:23:31
Speaker
and which most law schools participate in. It's called simplicity and twice a year we publish on simplicity, we process for applying. The apprenticeship is in fact different from a job. It is officially a postdoctoral fellowship so that the participants are not employees of the school but students of the school.
00:24:01
Speaker
And that means that that has some practical application because it means that during that year they could defer their student loans. Um, they have other opportunities that are available to students, but all of our fellows are on full tuition and fee scholarship. And we received a substantial stipend akin to what one would have in a clerkship. Um, so it's posted on,
00:24:31
Speaker
simplicity, people apply the way you would generally apply for a job, submitting transcripts, resumes, cover letters, writing samples, but then that the applications are run through a admissions committee that makes the determinations of who's in and who's out.
00:24:54
Speaker
Fantastic. I love the apprenticeship model and the ways that you've really built on the medical school apprenticeship model and integrated that into Rutgers Law School. Is there anything in the works concerning the future of RLA? Our commitment to the law school has been that we will not draw resources from other enterprises in the law school.
00:25:23
Speaker
whether it is by providing low bono services at recharge $60 an hour or legal services, or whether it is under some granting program that we have managed to secure where we can serve people pro bono with a third party payer for that service. We have been fulfilling that commitment of not having a drawing resources estimate. That's meant that our growth has been
00:25:53
Speaker
gradual. The growth is there though. We are now twice the size that we were when we were started in 2014 and as our funds permit, we keep growing one bit at a time. Are there other possibilities? Sure, but maybe that would be subject for another podcast and something.
00:26:17
Speaker
Right. Absolutely. That sounds great. Well, it is wonderful to see how the program has grown over the years. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Unique Programs at Rutgers
00:26:31
Speaker
I'd like to let folks know that Rutgers is the only school in the country that is doing this. And I think that is absolutely consistent with where Rutgers has been for the last 50-plus years. You were at the Vanguard
00:26:47
Speaker
clinical education. We were among the first law schools in the country to offer clinics. Our clinics are among the most robust, active, and wide, real clinics rather than simulated clinics. And I look at Rutgers Law Associates as a new venture and a pilot program, but coming on the shoulders of a
00:27:18
Speaker
commitment to serving the public and serving our law students with practical training. A couple of other places have tried to do this. I've been asked to talk with a number of law schools about the possibility. So far, we're the only one and ours is going great guns so I don't get the other schools and why they're missing out.
00:27:45
Speaker
Well, that is one of the many reasons that make me so proud to be at Rutgers. And I applaud you for the work that RLA has been doing. And congratulations, again, on your recent in-court victories. That's fantastic and fantastic for our students. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Thanks so much for joining us here today. Not at all. It's my pleasure.
00:28:09
Speaker
The Power of Attorney is a production of Rutgers Law School. With two locations just minutes from New York City and Philadelphia, Rutgers Law offers the prestige and reputation of a large, nationally known university with a personal, small campus experience. Learn more today by visiting us at law.retkers.edu.