Robert Holmes is the founder and director of the Community and
Transactional Lawyering Clinic and a 2016 winner of the Rutgers Human
Dignity Award. The clinic provides pro bono services to corporations,
including nonprofits and small start-up businesses, while providing law
students with experiential learning.
Professor Holmes is a clinical professor of law, the Clarence Clyde
Ferguson J. Scholar, deputy director of clinical programs, and director
of the Community and Transactional Lawyering Clinic.
He earned an A.B. in government from Cornell in 1967
and a J.D. from Harvard in 1971. He joined the law school in 1997.
Professor Holmes was executive director of the Newark Housing
Development and Rehabilitation Corporation from 1971-1974, then served
as assistant commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs and later as interim commissioner. From 1979 to 1987, he was
chief executive of the Newark Watershed Conservation and Development
Corporation, where he supervised the management and planning of the
35,000-acre Newark Pequannock Watershed. In 1987, Professor Holmes
became a partner with Wilentz Goldman & Spitzer, PC, where he
practiced corporate transactions, real estate and development, sports
and entertainment law, and municipal law. In 1995, he became counsel to
Medvin & Elberg in Newark.
A former member of the New Jersey Supreme Court Disciplinary Review
Board and former president of the New Jersey Public Policy Research
Institute, Professor Holmes is a board member of the Public Interest Law
Center of New Jersey, board member and secretary of Legal Services of
New Jersey, a board member of Minority Athletes Networking, an Executive
Council Member of NJ AARP, and a member of the board of trustees of the
Victoria Foundation.
