Arleigh Helfer

Arleigh comes to FIRE with more than two decades of legal experience at Philadelphia law firms Ballard Spahr LLP and Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP, where he was a commercial litigator and adviser to clients in highly-regulated industries. While he enjoyed litigating sophisticated commercial matters — especially in the federal Courts of Appeals — he also developed an award-winning pro bono appellate practice. The Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers presented him with its 2017 Alan Jay Josel Advocacy Award for the pro bono amicus brief he filed in a landmark Sixth Amendment case in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Kuren v. Luzerne County. Based on his pro bono efforts, Schnader granted him its Earl G. Harrison Pro Bono Award in 2018. Of all his pro bono engagements, however, he is proudest of having represented high school cheerleader B.L. from district court to the United States Supreme Court as co-counsel in the student speech case B.L. v. Mahanoy Area School District, which the ACLU won with support from FIRE as an amicus.

Arleigh chairs the American Bar Association’s Council of Appellate Lawyers’ Pro Bono Committee. He is a member of the Third Circuit Bar Association’s Publications Committee. He is licensed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and has been admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the District of New Jersey, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

A native of Michigan, Arleigh studied English literature at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, earned a master’s degree in English literature at the University of Maine, and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where he studied First Amendment law with professor Arthur Hellman and served as a managing editor of the law review.

As a longtime fan of satirical literature, George Carlin, Henry David Thoreau, and Frank Zappa, and as someone who occasionally got in trouble in school for speaking his mind, Arleigh is thrilled to be part of the team promoting and defending Americans’ rights at FIRE.

When he isn’t working, Arleigh enjoys spending time with his wife and daughters as well as canoeing, hiking, attending concerts, and walking his feisty Shiba Inu, Kimber.