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Thrive and drive powers Rosenthal’s long career

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//February 21, 2019//

Thrive and drive powers Rosenthal’s long career

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//February 21, 2019//

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Joel Rosenthal
Joel Rosenthal

One of Joel Rosenthal’s most memorable cases involved both a false confession from his client and a spontaneous identification.

Before trial in the case, the state had come forward with no evidence placing his client at the crime scene, save for his client’s own false confession. But after voir dire and just before testimony began, prosecutors informed Rosenthal that a witness had recognized his client upon seeing him in the courthouse.

The proceedings were declared a mistrial, and the case went all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which let the new witness in to identify Rosenthal’s client.

Eventually, there was a trial before a jury and an acquittal of Rosenthal’s client.

That case is just one of thousands Rosenthal has handled over his more than four decades of practice, which has been mostly in criminal defense. He has represented clients from around the country and handled civil cases involving real estate and probate matters.

Before his work in the law, Rosenthal taught sociology at Texas Southern University, a historically black university in Houston. But rather than go on to get his doctorate in sociology, Rosenthal decided, after finding how much he enjoyed working with students from different walks of life, to go to law school.

“I liked that, and there’s more of that in the law when you represent people,” Rosenthal said. “When I look back that was something I needed and enjoyed — and still do.”

Rosenthal started his legal career at Legal Aid Society of Wisconsin, then took a position at the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office.

After three years he went into private practice, where he practiced with his future partner, Gary Luck. The two opened their own firm, Luck & Rosenthal, in 1977 and practiced together until Luck retired in 2012.

Rosenthal now practices law part-time, taking primarily misdemeanor cases in Milwaukee and southeast Wisconsin.

When he isn’t in court, he promotes the work of his wife’s uncle, Carlos Hermosilla Alvarez, who was a fine-arts professor at the University of Chile and the father of realist printmaking in that country.

Rosenthal’s decision to continue practicing is not surprising to his colleague Ron Bornstein, a Milwaukee attorney who has known Rosenthal for about 40 years.

“He still does really good work and still stays up on the law,” Bornstein said. “He loves what he does. He takes pride in the profession, and he can still do it — and he enjoys helping people.”

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