HIGHLIGHTS:
Professor of Law; joined California Western in 1992
J.D., George Washington University [cum laude]
B.A., Rutgers State University of New Jersey

When Mark Weinstein was a law student at George Washington University, about the last thing on his career horizon was becoming a law school professor.

"If somebody had told me then that I would end up as a professor, I would have died laughing," Weinstein says with a smile. "The professors I had there were so profoundly different from the professors we have here at California Western, it's amazing. There they didn't really interact with students at all, while here the strong personal involvement and relationships most professors have with their students is high among the things that make our school special."

"If somebody had told me then that I would end up as a professor, I would have died laughing," Weinstein says with a smile. "The professors I had there were so profoundly different from the professors we have here at California Western, it's amazing. There they didn't really interact with students at all, while here the strong personal involvement and relationships most professors have with their students is high among the things that make our school special."

Born in northern New Jersey, Weinstein began thinking about the law in college during a summer job as a courtroom attendant in criminal court. There he got to observe the skills of a number of outstanding lawyers, including the famed William Kunstler. After graduating from Rutgers, Weinstein got his law degree at George Washington and decided to pursue public service law.

"I didn't go into law for the money, so when discovered I could use my degree to perform legal services for the indigent, it matched my sense of social responsibility," Weinstein recalls. "I really liked working on civil rights cases for a group of individuals who traditionally had not received much representation. I thought it was an important use of my talents."

He spent the next five years providing legal services to the indigent in Reading and Allentown, Pa. That experience helped him get his first university job as a clinical law teacher at the Washington University School of Law, followed by a similar position at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He took a 10-year detour to start his own general law firm with two partners in Allentown, before confirming teaching was his passion and accepting a position as a tenure track associate professor at California Western.

Weinstein was hired to supervise students in the internship program. Over the next 10 years he added negotiation and civil procedure to his teaching duties. In 2002, he became associate dean, a position he held for five and half years, a remarkable two to three years longer than usual.

"I describe the job of associate dean as walking into the ocean and being hit with one wave after another. It never stopped, but I liked the challenge of problem solving and getting things done," says Weinstein.

“I'm proud of the job I did and couldn’t have done it without the support and collaboration of my fellow associate dean, Janet Bowermaster. I'm particularly proud of overseeing some of the wonderful renovations to the classroom building, as well as the productive relationships I developed with the department heads. And, I am particularly proud of the role I played in negotiating our school's contract with Bar Bri to enhance our school's bar preparation program."

Weinstein's work on the UC San Diego merger was equally grueling, so he was thrilled to get back to his previous job last year.

"Teaching is an incredible experience and I feel like one of the luckiest people in the world, because I get to see students when they come in raw and scared, watch them learn and grow, and then go out into the community polished and ready to contribute to their new field.

"California Western is a wonderful teaching institution and by far the most student-friendly law school I've ever seen," Weinstein adds. "We hire faculty members who care deeply about teaching and scholarship. While our incoming students may not have the credentials of Harvard and Yale, something great happens to them here at California Western. They outperform students with higher incoming LSATs on the bar exam and the firms who hire them praise them for their ability to hit the ground running and desire to excel."

"Playing a role in this kind of transformation is what I'm proudest of, and it’s how I know that working as a law professor is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing in life."

BOB ROSS // RES IPSA ONLINE