For longtime donor Steven Rosenfeld, the stipulation that New York Lawyer’s Code of Professional Responsibility that attorneys “should render public interest and pro bono legal service” isn’t just a recommendation.

“It’s long been part of the [code], as it should be,” said Rosenfeld.

Lawyers are the guardians of our system of justice and have an obligation to help make sure it serves everyone.

Rosenfeld, Of Counsel to the Litigation Department at Paul, Weiss, where he practiced securities, insurance, and reinsurance litigation for decades, first gave to The Legal Aid Society in the early 1970s. He was driven to serve the public interest from the moment he graduated from Columbia Law School, and by the time he became a partner at Paul, Weiss in 1976, he had already become a member and board chair of the Community Law Office (CLO), a special Legal Aid project established in East Harlem by a group of young lawyers from private law firms. CLO was merged into Legal Aid that same year, becoming what is now its Pro Bono Practice. Rosenfeld joined Legal Aid’s Board of Directors, along with four other members of the CLO board. From 1989-1991 he served as board president, and he later joined the Board of Advisors.

When Rosenfeld left the Board of Directors in the early 1990s, he vowed he would be back serving Legal Aid – and sure enough, when he retired as a Paul, Weiss partner in 2008, he returned for eight years, working three days a week as a pro bono attorney with the Juvenile Rights Practice. He devoted hundreds of hours annually to abuse and neglect cases, representing clients ranging from the newly born to older teens who had spent years in the foster care system. “I chose JRP because I had seen when I was LAS President that children are the Society’s most vulnerable clients, and least able to advocate for themselves,” he said.

He regularly encourages other senior attorneys to pursue pro bono work as a means of broadening their expertise and finding fulfillment post-retirement. “You’re using those skills that you’ve developed over years of practice,” he said, “but you have to do it in a whole new area of law, like Family Court, which is in many ways very different from civil and criminal courts.”

Rosenfeld became a regular contributor in the early 1980s, and his giving has not let up since. With equitable access to legal services a major priority his entire career, Legal Aid has remained on his annual giving list over the decades. He has also included Legal Aid in his estate plans. “It was in there from the first time I made a will,” he said. “And it’s always been in there.”

Rosenfeld holds the obligation of attorneys to aid individuals without means as sacred, but he doesn’t view Legal Aid as just “a lawyer’s charity.”

“When I was Legal Aid board president, every time I spoke to groups of non-lawyers,” he said, “my argument was that assisting low-income New Yorkers in dealing with their legal problems made our city more livable for all of us.”

Rosenfeld’s philanthropic and volunteer work has also included serving on the boards of the CUNY School of Law Foundation and the New York Theatre Workshop, and for eleven years as Chair of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board, to which he was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg. In recent years, Steve has also been writing and publishing short fiction, inspired in part by his pro bono work with Legal Aid.