Mark D. Rosenbaum

Most lament the glut of attorneys crowding the profession, but Mark Rosenbaum says there's a shortage - of public interest lawyers.

"We're privileged to practice the law, and part of that privilege is providing access," said Rosenbaum.

In the last year, Rosenbaum secured legal victories for particularly disenfranchised constituency: poor and minority students.

The Los Angeles Unified School District agreed to pay $75 million over three years to about three dozen schools after Rosenbaum argued layoff policies disproportionately hurt low-income and inner-city schools.

In August, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant ruled that California has a duty to provide adequate education English learners after Rosenbaum, with help from Lathham & Watkins LLP, Public Counsel and Asian Americans Advancing Justice, had argued the state violated the law by failing to teach about 20,000 students for whom English is a second language.

"There's no reason children cannot have equal opportunity to learn," Rosenbaum said.

Rosenbaum also represented students, faculty and prospective applicants to the University of Michigan last fall before the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge a voter-approved measure in Michigan that banned affirmative action in university admissions.

And this year he teamed up with attorneys from Public Counsel to represent students from seven schools who say they lose learning time because California fails to address problems like disorganized schedules and high staff turnover.

It's a heavy caseload that Rosenbaum balances with teaching duties. He lectures on constitutional and civil rights at University of California, Irvine, and he teaches free speech at the Peking School of Transnational Law in China. But Rosenbaum said he's energized by injustice.

"It's a crucial time. The distance between the haves and have nots is expanding," Rosenbaum said. "I think lawyers need to be at the forefront in making sure that that gap is closed to zero."

<< MATT HAMILTON