Established in 1997 in NY - Founded by the late Ernst C. Stiefel, who was a German-born Jewish lawyer who fled Adolph Hitler, and became one of Germany's pre-eminent lawyers who also practiced in NY. Steifel made it one of his life's missions to document and chronicle the contributions made to dozens of foreign legal systems by refugee Jewish lawyers. As an adviser to the Allied military government in Germany after World War II, he helped lay the legal groundwork for a system of restitution and reparation that by the German Government's own account has sent more than $50 billion to Holocaust survivors living abroad. He also held a position with the wartime Office of Economic Warfare studying international insurance company records to identify strategic German industrial targets.