Soon after the Occu­py move­ment launched in Man­hat­tan last Sep­tem­ber, the neon green hats of Nation­al Lawyers Guild (NLG) mem­bers became ubiq­ui­tous. As Occu­py encamp­ments pro­lif­er­at­ed across the coun­try, vol­un­teer lawyers in more than 70 loca­tions came for­ward to bear wit­ness to thou­sands of arrests.

Where the NLG differs from other legal organizations is its close collaboration with protest movements to document arrests and defend arrestees.

Author­i­ties around the coun­try have tar­get­ed Occu­py pro­test­ers with selec­tive enforce­ment of the law. In Novem­ber, demon­stra­tors were evict­ed from camps in New York, Den­ver, Port­land and a score of oth­er loca­tions. And new anti-camp­ing ordi­nances passed since Jan­u­ary have been used to break up the remain­ing win­ter encamp­ments in cities like Char­lotte, N.C., and Hon­olu­lu. Orga­ni­za­tions like the NLG, the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union and Pub­lic Cit­i­zen have helped Occu­py to chal­lenge evic­tion orders and oppose new ​“anti-Occu­py” laws.

Where the NLG dif­fers from oth­er legal orga­ni­za­tions is its close col­lab­o­ra­tion with protest move­ments to doc­u­ment arrests and defend arrestees. Found­ed in 1937 as a pro­gres­sive alter­na­tive to the Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion, the Guild estab­lished a legal observ­er pro­gram in 1968 to defend Viet­nam War pro­test­ers who had tak­en over Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty build­ings. The same year, the NLG orga­nized to defend demon­stra­tors arrest­ed at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Chica­go. The orga­ni­za­tion has since been on the front lines against the repres­sion of activists in the envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, anti­war and civ­il rights movements.

“Orga­nized dis­sent in Amer­i­ca would be impos­si­ble with­out [the Guild],” says inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist and Occu­py activist John Kne­fel, who was held for 36 hours after being arrest­ed Decem­ber 12 for the crime of film­ing police activ­i­ty dur­ing a protest in New York. ​“As a jour­nal­ist with­out NYPD-issued cre­den­tials, I know that I could get arrest­ed at any time while I’m cov­er­ing Occu­py. Know­ing that I have lawyers who will work pro bono on my case makes my job sig­nif­i­cant­ly less stressful.”

In New York, 44 attor­neys coor­di­nate legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the almost 1,700 peo­ple arrest­ed at OWS protests.

On the West Coast, NLG attor­neys scram­bled to deal with the after­math of Occu­py Oak­land protests in Octo­ber. Fol­low­ing the chaos in the streets, Oak­land pro­test­ers found them­selves in legal lim­bo, some­times wait­ing two months to have charges lev­eled against them.

Rachel Led­er­man, a Cal­i­for­nia-based NLG attor­ney, calls the wait­ing times ​“very abnor­mal” in terms of the gen­er­al crim­i­nal process. ​“Many peo­ple have been get­ting snatched for no rea­son. But then they’ve been released and are in a state of lim­bo. We’ve been in a posi­tion of hav­ing to tell peo­ple they have to keep call­ing the DA’s office for months to make sure they don’t have a war­rant and they’re not being charged,” says Lederman.

The NLG also defends pri­va­cy and First Amend­ment rights. Mal­colm Har­ris, a 23-year-old OWS activist who was arrest­ed along with 700 oth­er pro­test­ers on the Brook­lyn Bridge last Octo­ber, had his Twit­ter records sub­poe­naed by New York Dis­trict Attor­ney Cyrus Vance. The Jan­u­ary 26 sub­poe­na demand­ed ​“any and all tweets post­ed for the peri­od of 9÷15÷2011−12÷31÷20011” by Har­ris. NLG attor­ney Mar­tin Sto­lar told The Guardian that the DA was prob­a­bly look­ing for an incrim­i­nat­ing state­ment. ​“Three and a half months of this guy’s tweets and per­son­al records – and for what, to go fishing?”

Jim Fen­ner­ty, an NLG lawyer in Chica­go, is one of the attor­neys who recent­ly reached a $6.2 mil­lion set­tle­ment in a class-action law­suit brought against the Chica­go Police Depart­ment on behalf of hun­dreds of pro­test­ers arrest­ed en masse, with­out warn­ing, dur­ing a 2003 protest oppos­ing the start of the Iraq War. The law­suit and set­tle­ment may have influ­enced CPD’s han­dling of Occu­py Chica­go, where, Fen­ner­ty notes, police went up to demon­stra­tors indi­vid­u­al­ly and gave them an order to disperse.

But in the heat of the moment, he fears any lessons learned by police from the 2003 case, which took nine years for the city to set­tle, will instant­ly be for­got­ten. ​“Will that change for G8 and NATO [sum­mits in May]? I don’t know,” Fen­ner­ty says.

How­ev­er, he’s pleased that the end result was one in which pro­test­ers secured a vic­to­ry. ​“This is an impor­tant deci­sion because it shows, if the police do this – even though it may take a long time – in the end, the right to protest is going to win out.