NCLC Summer Intern Named Fellowships

Professor Michael M. Greenfield is a distinguished legal scholar and professor emeritus at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, where he taught from 1969 until his retirement in 2022. He authored Consumer Transactions, Sales: Cases and Materials and the treatise Consumer Law. He also served as Reporter for the Uniform Debt-Management Services Act, participated in revisions of several Uniform Commercial Code Articles, and advised on projects such as the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts, reflecting his ongoing interest in improving practical legal frameworks for consumers.

As a continuation of his career-long commitment to mentoring future legal professionals, Professor Greenfield established the Greenfield Fellowship to inspire WashU Law students, who are given preference for this summer internship, to explore and consider a career in consumer law. 

Robert “Bob” Hobbs, the longtime deputy director of the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC), was a giant in American consumer law advocacy and widely recognized as a “founding father” of today’s consumer rights community. A leading authority on debt collection practices, Bob drafted the Model Consumer Credit Act and wrote parts of the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, while authoring NCLC’s seminal Fair Debt Collection treatise and editing numerous foundational works guiding the practice of consumer law. Over four decades at NCLC, Bob initiated what has become the largest annual convening of the consumer law community, the Consumer Rights Litigation Conference (CRLC), helped found the National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), and consistently committed himself to protecting vulnerable people from abusive debt collection practices and to strengthening the capacity of lawyers to defend consumer rights.

The Hobbs Fellowship was established in 2014 to honor Bob’s legacy by supporting law students who demonstrate a strong passion for consumer advocacy and a clear commitment to pursuing public interest law careers. 

Stuart T. Rossman became NCLC’s first Director of Litigation in 1999, following his service as Chief of the Trial Division and Chief of the Business and Labor Protection Bureau at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. Over more than two decades, Stuart shaped NCLC’s class action and consumer protection litigation program, co‑edited NCLC’s authoritative treatise on class actions, and coordinated major cases advancing access to credit, fair lending, debt collection protections, and consumer justice. Throughout his career at NCLC and beyond, Stuart has worked to build the next generation of consumer advocates – teaching trial advocacy at the University of Michigan Law School and Northeastern University School of Law, serving in leadership roles with the National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), co-directing NCLC’s Summer Intern Program, and mentoring countless law students and new consumer rights lawyers.

Funded by generous supporters of NCLC’s Campaign for the Future, NCLC created the Rossman Fellowship in 2023 to mark Stuart’s retirement and establish a permanent source of funding for a rising third-year law student to learn consumer law through a summer internship at NCLC.