Robert I. Gruber

Robert I. Gruber practices law in New York and is also a member of the Florida Bar. He concentrates on personal injury litigation. During his more than 34 years of military service, he was a judge advocate in the United States Air Force Judge Advocate General Corps and edited and principally authored the Air National Guard Commander’s Legal Deskbook, a 1300-page practical guide for commanders and judge advocates that has been updated for 30 years. As the Air National Guard Assistant to The Judge Advocate General of the United States Air Force, he was responsible for the training and readiness of the nation’s nearly 400 Air National Guard judge advocates and paralegals. In recognition of his creative and innovative teaching techniques and creation of several participatory and interactive courses that have become staples of the training of commanders and their judge advocates, individually, and as they interact with each other, the United States Air Force annually bestows upon a deserving Air National Guard judge advocate or paralegal, the “Major General Robert I. Gruber excellence in Teaching Award.”

• Professionalism – Diversity, Inclusion, and Elimination of Bias

  
  

  A. Workplace: In your law firm’s quest to grow and cultivate new business,
  you have been appointed by the managing partner of your law firm to an inhouse
  committee the firm has formed to identify whether there exists among
  the employees of the firm any bias or prejudice based upon (1) race, (2)
  religious practices, (3) gender, (4) sexual orientation, and (5) ethnicity as
  they pertain to the firm’s (a) recruiting and hiring practices, (b) assignments,
  and (c) promotions. The managing partner has posed several scenarios in
  these areas for your committee’s discussion and recommendations.
  B. Courts and Administrative Boards: Because of your demonstrated
  sensitivity to the issues of diversity, inclusion, and elimination of bias, and
  well-deserved reputation for addressing real-life scenarios to expose those
  issues for the betterment of the legal profession, a statewide group of
  judges of courts of competent jurisdiction and administrative tribunals
  has requested your firm to create such scenarios for the judges to
  recognize and eliminate bias or prejudice they may encounter on the
  bench based upon (1) race, (2) ethnicity (3) religious practices, (4)
  gender, and (5) sexual orientation. You agree to do so and have prepared
  a series of scenarios for the judges to address.

• Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

  
  

  A. Your firm is asked by your client, the CEO of a large corporation, to
  review a scenario in which a complaint of sexual harassment has been
  made and investigated. Based upon the scenario and the investigation,
  you have been asked to devise a comprehensive policy to effectively
  detect, prevent, to the extent possible, and implement procedures to
  strictly enforce that policy should sexual harassment occur.
  B. As part of the process of devising this policy, you are asked whether
  to discuss the current climate in the workplace based upon the
  scenario, with an all-male group, an all-female group, or a group of
  both genders, and to give reasons for that choice.
  C. In addition, the CEO requests that, based upon the results of the
  investigation of the complaint in the scenario, you address the
  viability and extent of a dress code for both male and female
  employees and supervisors, and the viability of a dating policy for all
  employees, including supervisors, as part of the comprehensive policy
  to detect, and prevent, to the extent possible, sexual harassment in the
  CEO’s workplace.