In his 44 years as a lawyer, David N. Rosen has been all about shaking up the legal system.
From the peace generation to "Generation Me," Rosen and his legal posse have successfully represented the underdogs, confronting big corporations, public utilities and all kinds of government — state, local, federal and international.
Although he initially had no idea what he would do with his degree from Yale Law School, this mindset of "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable" was seeded in him from the get-go.
"It really never occurred to me to work for a law firm," Rosen said. "My first summer of law school, in 1967, I went to South Carolina and taught social studies at a segregated high school in a small town; the next year I worked for the ACLU in New York."
As a 3L in the late 1960s, he and six other classmates strove to start a public interest law firm, a new concept at the time.
At the forefront of the Environmental Movement, they obtained funding and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) was created. Today, the NRDC boasts 1.4 million members and online activists nationwide. The group includes 350 lawyers, scientists and other professionals, according to the organization's website.
Rosen soon realized that rather than "working for a cause such as the environment, no matter how worthwhile, I was much better suited in working with people."
Obtaining his J.D. in 1969, he found work at the then-young New Haven Legal Assistance Association. By the end of that first year, he was fired.
Rosen's boss found out Rosen had been volunteering after work to provide volunteer legal counsel to Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale, who had just been indicted for murder in New Haven after giving a speech at Yale.
Rosen lost his job over what amounted to a conflict of interest; the NHLAA was representing an eyewitness in the case. Rosen said the opportunity to work on the Seale case was worth the risk.
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