About the legal observers program
The National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer® program was established in 1968 in New York City in response to protests at Columbia University and city-wide antiwar and civil rights demonstrations. That same year, Guild students organized for the defense of people swept up in mass arrests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
NLG-LV works to ensure the legal and practical access to demonstrations in Southern Nevada by regularly providing legal observers at demonstrations to observe and document potentially unlawful or unjustified interference with demonstrators' rights by law enforcement. Our legal observers are all volunteers, and are comprised of attorneys, legal workers, law students, and members of the community. All legal observers must be at least 18 years old and undergo an NLG legal observer training.
Here in Las Vegas, legal observers do not attend protests without invitation from organizers. Furthermore, the information we collect is confidential and to be used solely for the purpose of litigation. We work to maintain confidentiality and privileged communication security.
As we transition to using NLG Legal Observer hats to identify our legal observers in the field, we would like to thank Angie Morelli and Customistic for providing all of the t-shirts we used during the first four months of our program. Her support has been essential in making us readily identifiable in the community and ensuring our safety while conducting observations.
To request legal observers at your action or protest, please email LASVEGAS@NLG.ORG as far in advance of the action as possible. We only attend demonstrations where we’ve been invited by an organizer and will do our best to accommodate requests.
Following a request from organizers to deploy legal observers, the following criteria will be used to prioritize our limited resources:
Action is aligned with NLG’s values
Actions will be prioritized that have a high likelihood of law enforcement presence and/or counter-protester presence
Pre-planned, non-exigent actions will be prioritized when organizers give reasonable notice of their legal observer request (ideally, one week advance notice of the action).