After graduating from St Lawrence University and Columbia Law School, Rod went directly to work for District Attorney Frank S Hogan at the New York County District Attorney’s Office.
He was ultimately assigned to the Homicide Bureau where he became a seasoned trial lawyer. He tried serious murder cases until Mr Hogan made him one of his eight Bureau Chiefs. He was the youngest. Robert Morgenthau succeed Hogan as the District Attorney and he put Rod in charge of the Supreme Court Bureau. When Morgenthau reorganized the office, Rod was made Chief of the Trial Division. In that later position, he was in charge of most of the trials in the office and had more than half of the Assistant District Attorneys under his supervision.
When now Federal District Judge John F Keenan left the office to became the New York State Special State Prosecutor for the Investigation of Corruption in the New York City Criminal Justice System, he brought Rod with him to be his Chief Assistant. When Keenan became a Federal Judge, Rod became the Special Prosecutor. Rod then served as Executive Director of the Liman Commission chaired by Arthur Liman, before he left government service to go into private practice. He formed the law firm of Lankler Siffert and Wohl. Rod is now retired but the law firm carries on.
While in private practice, Rod served as Counsel to the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Police Management and Personnel Policy (the Zuccoti Committee); as a member of the Mayor’s Committee on the Judiciary; as a member of the Chief Judge’s Advisory Committee on Criminal Law and Procedure; as a Commissioner on the new York City Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption ( the Mollen Commission); and, as first Deputy Independent Counsel to Independent Counsel Robert B. Fiske, Jr in charge of the Whitewater investigation in Little Rock, Arkansas and Washington, D. C.