Education
Rotenberg studied English literature at the University of Toronto, and then earned his law degree at Osgoode Hall Law School.
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Robert Rotenberg
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His extensive experience as a criminal defence lawyer informed his critically acclaimed first novel, Old City Hall. He currently practices as part of the association of Rotenberg Shidlowski Jesin. He went to the London School of Economics for a masters degree in International Law, and traveled Europe on various scholarships.
The influences of the literary realm and the legal profession have emerged throughout his career.
While in Europe in the early 1980s, he was the managing editor of English-language magazine Passion, The Magazine of Paris. When he returned to Canada, he and a partner founded and published T.O. The Magazine of Toronto, which ran for six years and folded in 1988.
After brief stints as a film executive and a Canadian Broadcasting Company Radio producer, Rotenberg returned to law. Rotenberg has been reducing the tie he spends practicing law, saying he plans to write 20 legal thrillers set in Toronto.
Rotenberg also teaches part-time at the Humber School correspondence course and does writing seminars at various law firms in Toronto as well as lecturing at an Master of Laws program at Osgoode Hall Law School.
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He and associates Alvin Shidlowski and Jacob Jesin have had a criminal law practice in Toronto since the early 1990s defending, as Rotenberg describes it, "everything from murder to shoplifting." Cases attracting particular attention have included the defence in 2007 of an Ontario College of Art and Design student who planted a fake bomb and posted a YouTube video about it as part of an art project, which in turn prompted an evacuation during a gala fundraiser at the Royal Ontario Museum.
