Amsterdam, to apply for a tenure track position at Pace Law teaching criminal law and writing. He has now been at Pace Law for 22 years, teaching primarily criminal law and procedure. In the late 1990s, he and Professor Lissa Griffin developed a simulations based course “Interviewing, Counseling and Negotiating,” but he says his favorite thing by far is teaching the Criminal Justice Clinic. Working with a small group of students and “getting in deep with cases,” he helps them develop into lawyers as they represent clients from the Bronx County Criminal Court. “Learning by doing is really the best way to learn.” Professor Dorfman’s commitment to his teaching and to the law is all the more notable when he shares that he never really set out to be a teacher or a lawyer. As a teenager, he had intended to be a writer—a novelist or a poet, perhaps. Absorbed in the work of Saul Bellow and Herman Melville, he studied literature and philosophy at Queens College before receiving a
SUMMER 2017
F A C U LT Y P R O F I L E
“Learning by doing is really the best way to learn.”
fellowship to pursue graduate work at the University of Chicago. “This was the late 70s, early 80s, a politically charged time in Chicago.” He immersed himself in the political scene, working on Harold Washington’s mayoral campaign and protesting a visit by Robert McNamara that achieved its goal of blocking the former Defense Secretary’s access to campus to receive an award. “This all reminded me of where a large part of my heart is.” By this time, he had completed all the coursework for his PhD but the dissertation just wasn’t calling to him. Taking some time off, he painted houses including one owned by a law professor who suggested law school might be a better fit so he applied to ChicagoKent College of Law. Looking back, he admits it all seems rather inevitable. His parents, Professor Dorfman says, were “political radicals.” His father had been a black-listed writer during the McCarthy era. He had grown up in a diverse community in New York City, in a home that he described as filled with books but not much else. Law school simply focused his life-long political interests. Becoming “a people’s lawyer” seemed obvious. Teaching at Pace Law seems obvious, too. He notes how the Pace motto, “Opportunitas,” cuts to the heart of his work. Whether defending a client who is facing his last chance or helping a law student who is the first in the family to attend college or law school, Professor Dorfman uses the law to help improve our society. “When I teach, I try to get students to think about how the law affects every day people. I see our students make connections with clients who have had very different life experiences, who have made very different life choices from their own. Yet they come to see how everyone is worth the investment of time and energy to help them get through the toughest time they may ever have in their life. “When our students achieve this, it is transformational. I watch them come out as different people. It is their achievement but I bask in the reflected glory. It is so gratifying.” n
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