Mayor Robert Greenbaum’s Legal Career Fit His Skills and Life Goals

BY STEVE SEARS STAFF WRITER

MOUNT OLIVE - As the tenure of Robert Greenbaum’s time as mayor of Mount Olive Township concludes in 2023, Mount Olive Life presents a four-part, quarterly series which talks about his life and accomplishments.

For our April 2023 issue, we’ll discuss with the mayor his college and law school years.

Mayor Greenbaum graduated from Clarkstown North High School in Rockland County, New York in 1980. Prior to graduation, he had applied to Union College in Schenectady, New York, and applied to several state schools: the universities of Albany and Buffalo, and the State University of New York at Oneonta.

The latter school was the one he selected. “After having visited Oneonta, I fell in love with the town and decided that it was a good fit for me,”

Greenbaum says. He was initially a Political Science major but graduated with a degree in American History.

Upon graduation from the State University of Oneonta, Greenbaum sought to enter the field of law, and wanted to stay in New York City to both study and work. “I wanted to generally work in the New York City area,” Greenbaum says, “and my choices came down to either Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law or New York Law School, and I decided that Cardozo was a better fit for me.” He finished law school in 1988.

2023 marks the 35th year of Greenbaum’s career as a lawyer, and he looks back at the beginning. “Throughout, I’ve always tried to help people, and the legal field, actually representing clients, fit that aspect of my personality. I also found that I was fairly proficient in writing and in public speaking, and those two criteria were important towards the profession.

I felt like it was a good fit for me in terms of my skills and my life goals.” And per the mayor, his legal and political careers, in his words, “dovetailed pretty well.” “I was involved more with politics before I really became a lawyer,” he says.

While at Clarkstown North, he aided and worked for the campaign of Theodore Dusanenko, a math teacher and wrestling coach at the high school who was running for Town Supervisor. “I think that my early political career actually prepared me to become a lawyer,” Greenbaum says.

Greenbaum was first an associate for both Greenberg Margolis of Roseland and Budd Larner in Short Hills, afterwards briefly worked for the Law Offices of Clark E. Alpert, P.C. in West Orange, and then returned to Budd Larner as a non-equity partner. After that, he was a partner in Greenbaum & Flanagan, LLC, in Roseland, and he now is a sole practitioner in Hackettstown.

“There are many ups and downs in the profession,” the mayor states while reflecting.

“Especially when you are as active as I am, practicing law and trying to run the town, so it becomes somewhat hectic at times. But there are moments in my career that I could say I just sat down and thought about what great success I had gotten for a client, and that is obviously the most rewarding feeling that you can have.”

In July, we will visit and learn more about Greenbaum’s career in government for the Township of Mount Olive.