Robert Hornick practiced law from 1973 until his retirement in 2006, concentrating on international arbitration, commercial transactions and Indonesia. He was a member of his law firm's executive committee, and its managing partner, for several years. He also served as a consultant on Indonesian law and law reform for U.S.A.I.D., Harvard Institute for International Development, U.N.D.P. and The World Bank, and testified before courts and arbitral tribunals in Asia, Europe and North America as an expert on Indonesian law. Currently, he chairs the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, a group based in New York that tries to help lawyers in China who are being persecuted because of the clients and causes they represent. He also sits as an arbitrator. Hornick has authored a number of books and articles about Indonesian law and international arbitration as well as, most recently, The Girls and Boys of Belchertown: A Social History of the Belchertown State School for the Feeble-Minded, published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2012.