Paul graduated from Weequahic as co-valedictorian, president of the OBA student government and an all-state baseball pitcher.  He was a recipient of a National Merit Scholarship and a National General Motors scholarship, among others.  He went on to graduate with academic distinction from Wesleyan University in 1960 and from the University of Michigan Law School in 1963.  After a year’s post-graduate fellowship in Amsterdam, he was associated with two prominent NYC law firms.  In between, he served as associate general counsel of the Peace Corps and as senior counsel of the Governor’s Commissioner to  Review NY State’s Human Rights Laws.   In 1970, he accepted a faculty position at Rutgers Law School-Newark, then known as the “People’s Electric Law School” because of its singular commitment to using law to advance social justice and equality.  In 2016, he retired from full-time law teaching as the Board of Governors’ Distinguished Service Professor and Alfred C. Clapp, Jr.  Distinguished Professor of Law, but he continues to work on a number of professional projects. His experiences at Weequahic led him to specialize in education law and policy, and to become a leading advocate for urban students.  In 1973, with a Ford Foundation grant he established and directed the Education Law Center, which not only has been the lawyer for NJ’s 300,000 urban students in the landmark Abbott v. Burke litigation but is today the nation’s most prominent public interest law firm representing students and parents.  The Abbott case has generated tens of billions of dollars of extra state education aid for Newark and other NJ urban school districts.  In 2000, Paul established and directed the Institute on Education Law and Policy at Rutgers-Newark.  As a lawyer and children’s advocate, he has focused on equalizing the funding of education and integrating the schools of NJ.