When Sen. Robert Torricelli pulled out of the campaign on Sept. 30, one man knew immediately he would be pulling a set of 12-hour days and a weekend in the office.
With the state’s Democrats demanding that the ballots be changed, Douglas Wolfson, director of the attorney general’s Division of Law, found himself on the phone and in meetings trying to figure out what the law said about such a withdrawal from the race. The next day, the state Supreme Court had taken over the case “before we even filed papers,” he says. “They gave us a schedule [to file] � until about 4 o’clock that day.”
“I think it was exciting and dramatic and, to some extent, tragic,” he says. “We went through an amazing week. This was the reason I left the bench, to be involved in cases like this.”
A day later, the Supreme Court agreed with the state’s position: Although Torricelli left the race after a 51-day deadline for ballot changes, the state had an interest in giving voters a fair contest.
“Our role was nonpartisan,” Wolfson says. “If you look at the newspapers, we were perceived to be in balance, right down the middle.”
Being “right down the middle” is, perhaps, what Wolfson likes best. During 10 years as a judge in Middlesex County, he had a knack for settling cases. In his latest job, he’s again putting his skills in compromise and settlement to good use, ushering in what he calls a new cooperative spirit for the division.
But there are some things Wolfson will not be compromising. Last week, in his first lengthy interview since he took office nine months ago, he said that his goal is to improve the professional reputation of the Law Division � New Jersey’s largest single grouping of lawyers � which, when he arrived in January, left something to be desired, he said.
Wolfson supervises more than 550 lawyers, more than any of New Jersey’s private law firms. As the state’s chief litigator, he is the one who sits across the table � figuratively, at least � in more Superior Court cases than any other party.
His long-term plan for the Law Division includes some restructuring and a change of priorities. Despite a hiring freeze that has left the division 50 lawyers short and an early retirement program that has taken another 25, Wolfson has a budget to restock previously neglected areas, such as the Division of Youth and Family Services. He signed papers for a dozen new deputies last week.
He also wants to reach out to lawyers from nontraditional backgrounds. The Law Division is statistically a diverse place, but its upper levels lack the minority lawyers found within the rank and file.
“I want to increase the number of minority lawyers,” Wolfson says. “We don’t have a lot of minority lawyers in leadership positions.”
To accomplish that goal, he’s looking to raid private firms for experienced minority lawyers � a task easier said than done given that such attorneys would take pay cuts of 60 percent to 75 percent.
PREYING ON PUBLIC SPIRIT
Wolfson’s secret recruitment weapon is preying on lawyers’ consciences to lure them into public service.
On that score, he speaks from experience. He became a judge, and left a lucrative partnership at Greenbaum, Rowe, Smith, Ravin, Davis & Himmel in Woodbridge, because, he says, he had qualms about environmental consequences litigating for real estate developers.
“It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, but it bothered me that we would do something, sometimes, that I didn’t think was always in the public’s best interest,” he says. As a judge, “You get to be the one who says ‘Wait a minute, you don’t have to do it that way.’ “
The problem with judging, and the reason he left it for his current job, is its passivity. “When you’re a judge, you have to wait until the cases come to you, and they might not,” he says. “Now I’m back in the mix, I’m a player who’s in the game. I’m now taking positions which are purely affecting the public interest.”
Wolfson’s cherry-picking strategy evinces a confessed “prejudice” in favor of lawyers like himself who have practiced for private and public employers. “I don’t think you can be as effective a lawyer if you’ve only had one orientation in your life . . . I would like people to be in the government who’ve done other things.” Lawyers who do not have that experience, he says, end up “looking at it like a government lawyer looks at it.”
The other reason he wants to recruit from outside is to dispel what he calls the “mixed bag” image of the division’s professional abilities. “What I’ve seen as a judge was, on occasion, very good lawyers. And then, on occasion, some were lazy and inattentive to their file.”
Lest his underlings think judges don’t notice or forget, “one lawyer in particular that I was very unhappy about seeing when I was a judge is no longer here. I’m not sure what I would have done had he still been here [when I arrived].”
By the time he leaves, Wolfson is hoping the quality of lawyering in the division is raised to meet that of the state’s big law firms. “A lot of the lawyers here are raw. They’re talented but they don’t have the benefit of Paul Rowe or Artie Greenbaum or Alan Davis [of Greenbaum, Rowe] teaching them or mentoring them,” he says. “It will take time to get that reputation.”
Newly recruited lawyers may find themselves steered toward the DYFS section, Wolfson’s “highest priority.” At present, the section has about 70 lawyers � 10 too few, in his opinion, for a section famous for burning out its employees.
“The workload is almost overwhelming . . . there aren’t enough lawyers or enough judges and case workers and guardians to protect them,” he says. “I want to bring in lawyers who are not there because they’ve been assigned there, but because they want to be there. The best lawyers I’m putting in the DYFS section, as opposed to New Jersey Transit or environmental or state contracting or agency advice or the DEP. I’m putting the cream of the people that I can find into DYFS because to me children deserve the best lawyers.”
To that end, Senior Deputy Attorney General Lauren Carlton, who heads the DYFS section, has been given a new set of duties. No longer is she juggling the case action between Newark and Trenton DYFS offices; now her priority is to be an “activist” and a “troubleshooter” who comes up with solutions to issues before they become a problem. Previously, “I don’t think anyone was doing it in a way that was sufficient for my purposes,” he says.
AN ERA OF COOPERATION
Wolfson sees himself as a dealmaker who can bring opposing sides to agreement.
Almost all the racial profiling cases that bedeviled the prior administration have been settled since his arrival.
In addition, the Law Division has smoothed over its relationship with David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, who has battled the state for equitable school funding under Abbott v. Burke.
This year, Sciarra agreed to give the state extra time to get its house in order before proceeding with more court action.
“We have brokered a new era of cooperation with the Education Law Center, which has been an adversary for 20-odd years,” Wolfson says.
That’s an attitude that has gained ground recently among government officials in New Jersey, where litigation can last decades and cost millions. Government lawyers are faced every day with the choice of settling or fighting, of paying now or paying later. Two counties, Hudson and Passaic, and the city of Passaic have adopted policies of early settlement where possible, and have not found themselves becoming magnets for shakedown suits.
Wolfson sounds like he is part of the trend. In talking about the Abbott case, he says, “It’s not business as usual. You have a partner now. We’re trying to get this done.”
