God has incredibly blessed the vision of ADF’s founders for an alliance that would act as a servant organization to engage in legal strategy and coordination, training, funding, and litigation to preserve religious liberty in America and to effectively challenge the ACLU and its allies. By January 2007 the Alliance Defense Fund had trained more than 1000 individuals through its unique National Litigation Academy. It is the goal of the Alliance Defense Fund to assist in recruiting, training, and supporting a network of 5,000 or more active attorneys to serve the Body of Christ and to help take the legal battles for religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and to preserve the family and its values to a new level - and win.
These first attorneys trained and equipped through the efforts of ADF (John 15:5) have gone forward to provide more than $62 million worth of volunteer, pro bono legal service to the Body of Christ – and some have become part-time or full-time lawyers with growing allied legal organizations engaging in legal efforts against the ACLU and its many allies and working for the restoration of a legal system that respects our faith, our nation’s heritage, and the written Constitution.
But this was not the way it was in 1993.
When the Alliance Defense Fund was launched there was no formal, national program to do any of these things.
The ACLU alone boasted of 2,200 or more volunteer attorneys in 1994 when ADF was launched. The ACLU’s many allies had many more as well as many paid staff lawyers. The ACLU's website reported that it alone was involved in more than 6,000 legal matters a year. All of the faith-based religious liberty organizations combined could match only a fraction of the ACLU's lawyers, funding, or case activities and statistics.
Recruiting and Training
The Alliance Defense Fund's founders asked: Is there a way to confront this lopsided challenge, to even surpass it, to create sufficient capacity to respond to opportunity, and to not just engage in the legal battle but actually win?
For many years people of faith and other concerned Americans appeared to have simply “rolled over” and surrendered much of the legal ground to those with opposing viewpoints and legal arguments contrary to the nation’s history and Constitution. They failed to even appear, much less fight, in hundreds, if not thousands of the legal skirmishes that activist judges and others were using to reshape the nation’s laws and to limit religious freedom.
Removing Barriers
After much study and prayer, examining numerous past failures and successes of many secular and faith-based efforts to develop effective volunteer legal efforts, ADF learned there were several significant barriers to pro bono, volunteer legal services by attorneys – including training, funding, and a strategic support network.
Though a real estate, tort, or a patent lawyer might have great expertise and ability in his or her field, the time and effort necessary to learn how to, and to effectively assist, in a religious freedom or other matter of concern to the alliance was unusually prohibitive to many otherwise interested lawyers. Even if a matter was undertaken and, if the case proceeded, the volunteer attorney had no network of experts and allies to support and assist them, nor did they have a ready source of funding for the sometimes very expensive out of pocket costs. Additionally, most attorneys with a heart for this kind of work seemed to be located in small practice groups or served as solo practitioners with limited resources. In contrast, the ACLU's volunteer lawyers often were in major law firms with vast resources, or law professors at tax-funded universities with multi-million dollar libraries and armies of students to do free research and writing for them.
There was little formal legal training offered anywhere, at any price, on the subjects of concern, but even when training was available, most like minded attorneys could not afford to take a week off without pay and also fund the high costs of the travel, lodging, and training.
After much more prayer and study, ADF developed the concept that it would, with God’s grace (James 4:15), supply all of the costs of an ADF ally for air transportation, housing, meals, instruction, and texts, if that ally would commit in writing to, after completion of training: (1) Complete 450 hours of pro bono, volunteer service for the Body of Christ and account to ADF for their time; and (2) share the knowledge they acquired with other like-minded lawyers.
Training Academy Launches
In 1996, the ADF team was blessed to receive designated funding from a small group of ADF ministry friends and to launch the first NLA training session in 1997.
The first National Litigation Academy Session proved many of the concepts. Nationally acclaimed, first-tier law professors and constitutional lawyers could – in a week – transfer a tremendous amount of knowledge and training to a group of motivated, volunteer and allied attorneys. The attending lawyers raved about the quality of instructors, some saying it was the best in their 10, 15, or even 20 years of legal practice. In addition, something unexpected happened as several men and women experienced a time of dynamic spiritual renewal and rededication.
Would Graduates Serve?
The next question in the unfolding dream was, when the trained allied attorneys got home, would they keep their promises – seek out the work needed to be done in their community and state, and respond to ADF and our allies’ requests for legal help? Would they actually serve the Body of Christ as promised? Would they be willing to confront the ACLU and its allies on any front – big or small? Would they be willing to provide truly Christian legal aid to the needy?
The answer, with only a few disappointments – many fewer than ADF actually expected – was a resounding, “yes.”
As the training effort has moved forward, God has continued to bless. Some of ADF’s Academy graduates became involved in the most significant cases being litigated in the nation. Others have taken on quiet matters in their home community ensuring justice for those who, in the exercise of their faith, could not afford a lawyer but wanted to preserve precious liberties. Some have been involved with zoning disputes where a church was told it could not expand or minister. Others have participated in Project Timothy (an Equal Access effort), or in the Christmas Project in 2003, protecting the public expression of our nation’s history and faith. Some have provided legal aid to the truly poor and needy from a distinctly Christian perspective. Many have made a dramatic difference for the Kingdom.
ADF has continued to pursue the dream. A core group of ministry friends has underwritten the lodging costs for scholarshipping the Academy sessions. For some sessions, one or a few families have underwritten the costs of scholarshipping an entire Academy session, while for other sessions, a broad base of friends have contributed as the Lord has enabled them.
As of 2007, here are a few vital statistics after completion of 28 separate sessions of the National Litigation Academy (including two specialized summits):
|
1,035 |
Attorneys attending a National Litigation Academy session through August 2007 |
|
385,975 |
Hours reported to ADF as completed for the Body of Christ |
|
$70 million |
Value of time already donated to the Body of Christ |
*
includes hours pledged by repeat allies
we expect all of our graduates to be "entrepreneurial," actively seeking ways to serve their church,
community, and the body of Christ In 2003, funding became available to dramatically expand the efforts to coordinate and further enhance the efforts of the NLA graduates with the addition of Joe Infranco, Vice-President, Office of Allied Attorney Support & Coordination, to ADF’s team. Joe, a 25-year seasoned veteran attorney with strong organizational skills, and in-depth experience in the legal battle for religious liberty, enthusiastically jumped in to help lead the growing allied attorney network with several new efforts to confront the ACLU and its allies and to well represent the Body of Christ on matters of concern. One of the 2003 projects was the very successful Christmas Project with allied attorney involvement from Florida, to New Jersey, to Colorado, to Alaska. The Christmas Project received much national media coverage including features on CNN’s
Lou Dobbs Tonight, Fox’s
The O’Reilly Factor, MSNBC’s
Scarborough Country,
U.S. News & World Report, and many other print and electronic forums.
Current National Litigation Academy graduate attorney projects underway, expanding, or launching in 2006 include:
- the 2006 Christmas Project
- Truth Project
- CLS Legal Aid Project
- Student-University Rights Project
- Allied Attorney News Letter Project
- State Family Policy Council Project
- Exodus Project (Equal Access / Educational Awareness defending former homosexuals)
- Faith and Freedom Sunday and Church Member/Leader Education
And there are more to come. As more funding becomes available, these projects will continue to generate an increasing return on investment, as we seek to further assist and empower our NLA graduate attorneys. In addition, we plan to increase the Allied Attorney Support Team to provide even more coordination, litigation inter-cooperation opportunities, and other ways to help these dedicated and faithful lawyers align their desire to serve the Kingdom effectively with opportunity and need.
The Dream Continues
We are very grateful to God for all He has allowed us to accomplish in this early phase of the dream, the effort to grow and train an ever-expanding body of allied attorneys. We have been allowed to build a solid base thanks to the support and participation of hundreds of lawyers, thousands of generous ministry friends, and much prayer. And one of ADF’s greatest joys is to see more and more people that attended a National Litigation Academy session for training, gaining expertise and experience, and then returning as an instructor.
We have a long way to go to fully develop our dream - many aspects remain - but with your prayers and support the Alliance will achieve its dream and we will win.
It is ADF’s goal, our dream, to see more than 5,000 very active, trained NLA graduates aggressively standing for religious freedom, the sanctity of life, the family, and other issues critical to the alliance and the Body of Christ across America – and moving from merely confronting the ACLU and its allies, to surpassing them – to win, to bring a new era of religious liberty to our nation as envisioned by America's founders.
Please Join the Dream
This noble experiment is beginning to bear much fruit (John 15:5). There are many ways that you can be part of helping to grow and fulfill this dream.
- Please assist us in recruiting attorneys to attend the National Litigation Academy and make the pro bono commitment of volunteer legal service.
- If you are an attorney please get more information and attend a future Academy session yourself and encourage your peers to do so.
- Please sign up to get more information about the efforts of the Alliance Defense Fund and its many allied lawyers to effectively fight and win the many battles shaping the future of our nation.
- Please pray for and financially support the work of the Alliance.