After graduating from Brooklyn Law School, Kaufman worked for the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice.
He then served as a legislative assistant to New York Senator Jacob K. Javits, before joining Proskauer Rose.
Among his many civic posts, Robert Kaufman has served as chairman of the Times Square Business Improvement District, and the Fund for Modern Courts, as president of the American Judicature Society, and has served on the board of The New York Community Trust as vice chairman, and is now a consulting member.
[2] He is also a former member of the board of visitors of the U.S. Military Academy (West Point), the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, the judicial advisory committees to Senators Javits and Moynihan, the Administrative Conference of the United States, and the U. S. Delegation to the International Conference of Courts of Military Appeals.
He currently serves as a special master of the Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court and as a member of the New York City Age Friendly Commission and of the Mayor's Midtown Citizens Committee Kaufman was born in Vienna, Austria, and came to England in 1938 on the Kindertransport and to the United States in 1939, as a Holocaust survivor.