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 The pair were one of several teams working in shifts to help some
of the more than 100 people who were arrested during last week's
sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Their job was to
help the newly released individuals get legal aid for upcoming court
appearances.
Each person received a flyer with numbers to call for lawyers and
legal advice. They were also offered a ride home.
The volunteers, who will return to the jail again on Monday after
the holiday weekend, are part of a centralized team of lawyers and
law school students pitching in from around the United States.
They are tapping into a sophisticated network of legal experts
established over the past decade in the wake of high-profile mass
demonstrations, including protests at the Republican National
Convention in 2004 and the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. The
network includes seasoned lawyers who routinely handle cases
stemming from protests and civil disobedience, and who say they have
learned from each protest.
 "Occupy Wall Street is the gift that keeps on giving," said Wylie
Stecklow, a New York-based lawyer. Stecklow's firm, Stecklow, Cohen
& Thompson (formerly Wylie Law), represented 200 people who were
arrested during the Occupy protests in New York.
He learned valuable lessons from the Occupy and RNC protests. For
example, how best to centrally fund bail payouts and how to work
together to represent large numbers of people.
Some of the volunteers deployed in Ferguson have acted as legal
observers, who are tasked with documenting each arrest that is made
at a protest and serving afterward as a witness to the events
leading to charges.
But the job of the legal team working in Ferguson goes far beyond
the duties of protest observers. Once people have been arrested and
charged, lawyers from the same central network offer their services
to each individual with a court case.
"HUGE APPARATUS OF INVISIBLE PEOPLE"
Since August, roughly 300 people, including local residents and
activists as well as organizers and journalists who traveled to
Ferguson, have been arrested amid the protests, which have been
marred by looting and arson attacks.
Those arrested face charges ranging from unlawful assembly and
trespassing, interfering with police activity and resisting arrest
to felonies including second degree burglary, arson, unlawful
firearm possession and assault.
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Many who were charged in the tumult that followed the police
shooting of an unarmed black teenager in August are set to appear in
court in January, while others arrested last week and unable to post
bail are still in jail. The team of lawyers working on Ferguson
protest cases is led by Arch City Defenders, a St. Louis-based group
that provides free legal representation to poor St. Louis residents.
Volunteers are manning a local legal aid hotline for protesters who
have been arrested and their families, and various local and
national non-profit groups have formed a central defense team to
handle the cases.
"There's a huge apparatus of invisible people working on this," said
Purvi Shah, director of the Bertha Justice Institute at the Center
for Constitutional Rights in New York.
She is one of around a dozen lawyers who have made regular trips to
Ferguson from around the country since August. She estimated there
were more than 100 lawyers offering help from afar and 10 or 15
people working in shifts on the ground. That number does not include
the law students and recent law school graduates volunteering in
Ferguson.
"Having a mass defense coordinating efforts is the best way to do
things because you've got lawyers and paralegals sharing
information," said Martin Stolar, a New York lawyer who represented
people arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests.
 "You can also tell the prosecutors, 'You should dismiss all of these
cases unless you can go through and prove every individual one is
valid.'"
(Editing By Ross Colvin)
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