The ADL and powerhouse law firm Gibson Dunn have launched a nationwide network of attorneys to provide free legal aid to Jewish Americans facing antisemitic harassment, vandalism, and violence — with organizers citing a record surge in anti-Jewish hate across the country.
The new ADL Legal Action Network, announced Wednesday, brings together more than 40 of the nation’s top law firms — including Cooley, Covington & Burling, Morgan Lewis, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer and Lieff Cabraser — to offer pro bono legal services to victims of antisemitism.
Together, the participating firms represent some 39,000 attorneys across 35 states.
“The FBI’s latest hate crime data show that Jews continue to be the most targeted religious group in America,” Orin Snyder, a partner at Gibson Dunn, told The Post. “More than 70% of all reported religious hate crimes are directed at Jews in America.”
According to Snyder, there’s been a 757% increase in the number of hate crimes directed at Jews in the United States since the Hamas terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.
“Unfortunately, 2024 to 2025 is going to be even greater,” Snyder told The Post. “That larger national trend is also factored into why this legal action movement is launching today.”
The new network expands upon a hotline that Gibson Dunn and ADL launched in 2023 to help students and faculty report antisemitism on college campuses.
That hotline — known as the Campus Antisemitism Legal Line (CALL) — received nearly 1,000 complaints from more than 260 schools across 40 states, Snyder told The Post.
“We were overwhelmed with complaints from campuses,” Snyder said. “And then we started getting inundated with reports from outside of universities — from workplaces, K-12 schools, and communities. That’s when we realized this needed to be a national pro bono initiative.”
He said the new system will use AI-powered triage to route cases through ADL’s incident-response network and participating firms, which will determine whether to take on victims’ cases directly.
Snyder said the network will handle “all forms of antisemitism,” from physical assaults and vandalism to online harassment, doxxing and discrimination in education or employment.
“It really covers all forms of antisemitism — including, most obviously, acts of violence, of which there are all too many,” Snyder said.
The original campus antisemitism hotline has already produced tangible results.
At Ohio State University, a man pleaded guilty to a federal hate-crime charge after attacking two Jewish students near campus.
And at Princeton, a hotline report prompted a policy overhaul after a Jewish student was wrongly targeted with a no-contact order while covering anti-Israel protests.
Gibson Dunn, which last year contributed more than 200,000 hours to pro bono work, will anchor the new network. Snyder said the firm is dedicating more than 100 of its own lawyers to the project and coordinating with around 40 partner firms.
“Our pro bono practice dwarfs every other practice we have — meaning paying clients,” Snyder said. “We have a long history of doing this, and we’re bringing that same energy here.”
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said the partnership dramatically expands the group’s capacity to provide legal services to Jewish victims of hate.
“For decades, victims of antisemitism have come to ADL to receive frontline services,” Greenblatt said.
“Through this partnership with Gibson Dunn, alongside dozens of the world’s top-tier law firms, we are now dramatically expanding our capabilities to support more Jewish Americans by helping to provide direct access to legal support anywhere in the country.”
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