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 Distinguished Clinical Professor of Law, the Clarence Clyde Ferguson Jr. 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.