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Once-homeless University of Chicago law grad getting treatment, hopes to return to law practice

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 19, 2025, 12:41 pm CDT

A University of Chicago Law School graduate who lived for two years on the streets of Los Angeles has moved back home with his mother in Virginia and hopes to resume law practice.

Rob Dart moved home in January and has been taking anti-psychotic medication for more than three months, the Wall Street Journal reports. He is taking online continuing legal education classes and hopes to regain his law license.

The Wall Street Journal had chronicled efforts by Dart’s family to help him in articles published this month and in May 2024. He began hearing voices when he was 35 years old and returned to his mother’s home at that time. He received medication and therapy for two years but quit treatment in 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dart ended up homeless in Los Angeles. His sister and mother had traveled to California to try to help him, but he often rejected them.

The Wall Street Journal’s coverage spurred some people to offer help. One reader set up a tab for Dart at a coffee shop. Another connected Dart’s family with a psychiatrist affiliated with a Pasadena, California, hospital who said he would treat Dart when he was willing to accept help.

Late last year, Dart began treatment at the hospital. But during the wildfires in Los Angeles earlier this year, Dart successfully petitioned for release. Days later, he agreed to return to his mother’s home and began treatment.

Online records indicate that Dart was admitted to law practice in Illinois in 2004 and in California in 2009. He was suspended in California for failure to meet state CLE requirements in 2022 and for failure to pay fees in 2023. He also failed to show compliance with Illinois CLE requirements and was last registered there in 2022.

Dart’s last registered address with Illinois attorney regulators was at the Wilshire Law Firm in Los Angeles.

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