Paul Newman is in the process of retiring from the practice of law, which began in 1967, when he received a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship in the Fellowship’s initial year, and was assigned to work as a legal services staff attorney at the Community Legal Assistance Office in Cambridge, MA. The office was sponsored by Harvard Law School under a grant from the federal Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and staffed by a handful of attorneys and about one hundred law student volunteers, who represented low income residents in civil and criminal cases, and low income community groups.
In 1970, Paul became the New England Regional Director of the OEO Office of Legal Services, responsible for funding, evaluating and assisting local Legal Services programs in the region. He remained in that position when the federal Legal Services Program was moved into the Legal Services Corporation in 1975, and worked in that position until 1984. From 1984 to 1990, Paul served as Executive Director of the Center for Law and Education in Cambridge.
In 1990, Paul opened a solo private practice in Lexington, most of the time sharing office space with five other attorneys. It started as a general practice, and steadily developed a specialty in domestic relations. Paul stopped taking new cases in 2014.
Paul has devoted a good deal of volunteer effort serving on committees of the local governments where he lived. He served on the first Cambridge Rent Control Board in 1972-1973, the Lexington By-Laws Committee (as chairman) from 1981-1982, and the Lexington School Committee (twice as chairman) from 1983-1989. Paul also served as a Hearing Officer for the Board of Bar Overseers in discipline cases from 2003-2009.
Paul graduated from Columbia Law School in 1966 and Harvard College (magna cum laude) in 1963.
As an Access to Justice Fellow, Paul will be working with the Volunteer Lawyers Project to volunteer for the SERV (Settlement and Early Resolution Volunteers) Project, at the Suffolk Probate & Family Court. Paul’s role will be to assist the parties in divorce and related cases to resolve their differences and then help them prepare the necessary papers that will let them, that day, walk their agreement into the courtroom for approval by the sitting Judge. These cases are referred to SERV by the Judge when he or she believes such conciliation might result in an appropriate agreement. VLP’s mission is to increase access to justice by delivering high quality pro bono civil legal services to eligible clients in the Greater Boston area.