 Prior to his academic career he worked for six years as a lawyer at the white-shoe firms Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York and Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C.

Reich was a professor at Yale Law School from 1960-1974.His "The New Property" influenced the Supreme Court to broaden its conceptualization of property in the landmark administrative law case "Goldberg v. Kelly".Both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were students of Reich when he was writing "The Greening of America" and he is mentioned in their biographies.