Before joining the Northeastern University faculty in 1970, Professor Subrin practiced civil litigation and labor law for seven years with the Boston firm of Burns & Levinson, where he became a partner in 1966. He has published extensively on civil procedure, with an emphasis on procedural reform, and the historical background of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Professor Subrin has taught Civil Procedure, Evidence, Complex Litigation, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Federal Courts, Civil Trial Practice, and Law and Literature: Life as a Lawyer. He was reporter to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Standing Advisory Committee on Rules of Civil Procedure for 12 years and was consultant to the reporter on the Local Rules Project of the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
Professor Subrin is coauthor of a seminal casebook, Civil Procedure: Doctrine, Practice, and Context. With Professor Margaret Y.K. Woo, he has written a text about American civil procedure for the Chinese legal community, published in Chinese. He and Professor Woo wrote Litigating in America, Civil Procedure in Context (Aspen Publishers, 2006).
Professor Subrin has taught Civil Procedure at Harvard Law School and Renmin University in Beijing, China, and Complex Litigation at Yale Law School. He has also taught Introduction to the American Legal System at the Cornell Summer Institute of International and Comparative Law in Paris.