VINCE LOMBARDI ONCE SAID, “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.” The legendary Green Bay Packers coach was describing a football team, but his observation fittingly describes the history of the liberty-minded public interest law movement—which begins with Pacific Legal Foundation.

PLF’s founders created an entire legal movement.

The pro-liberty public interest law movement got its start in 1973 with a group of conservative business leaders and a few lawyers who had worked for California Governor Ronald Reagan. They had seen how the left used public interest law to relentlessly expand the size and scope of government, and they were looking for a way to push back. The result was PLF and, within a few years, several other regional public interest firms.

When I started my career in public interest law nearly two decades ago, I learned about the “first- generation” public interest pro-liberty firms—like PLF—and the “second- generation” firms—like the Institute for Justice, where I got my start.

Steven Teles recounts this history in his book The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement. And despite missing many of the important victories of the first-generation movement, Teles recounts three areas where some first-generation firms faltered.

First, they were too reactive. They were formed to oppose legal public interest firms on the left, and therefore knew more about what they were against—big government, for example—than what they were for.

Second, they were regional and tended to focus solely on local, rather than national, issues.

Third, because they were funded by businesses that were understandably concerned by the growth of government, the first-generation firms steadily became focused not on principles such as individual freedom and constitutional government, but more narrowly on the interests of the businesses that were paying their bills.

This story is true in many respects, but it tells only part of the whole story. It creates the mistaken impression that the main virtue of the first-generation organizations is that they gave way to the second generation. This misses a crucial point that needs to be appreciated.

The founders of PLF and the other first-generation firms like it were pioneers. Speaking as someone who has spent the better part of his career trying to do what they set out to do, their accomplishments are so remarkable because they were bold enough, and perhaps nutty enough, to think they could accomplish anything at all.

Consider the America they encountered in 1973. The legal establishment, the courts, and the entire intellectual culture were against them. In the law schools, the dominant view was that the Constitution was passé, the Founders were relics, and the chief problem of American law was that government did not have enough power. PLF and the other first-generation firms were opposing a progressive movement that traced its roots to the intellectual founders of the New Deal. The government-expanding campaigns and organizations had at least a 50-year head start and almost universal support in legal intellectual circles.

Despite all this—no playbook, few allies in the culture, no allies in the law schools, and courts that were hostile to practically everything they wanted to accomplish—PLF’s founders pressed on and created an entire legal movement.

PLF was founded under almost impossible odds. We have adapted, changed, and endured for over four decades, and have grown stronger and more effective every year. Our founders could not have foreseen the full scope of the movement they would launch. And today, as we work to define the next generation of public interest law firms, we continue to learn from the past, while keeping our eyes on the future.