"[1] Arshack, who has been a defender for his entire career and "has never put anyone behind bars as either a prosecutor or government counsel,"[2] is known for his expertise on international criminal justice issues, lawyer trainings, and anti-death penalty advocacy.
Arshack attended Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland,[5] where he played on the varsity soccer team and was president of Stage Crew.
He worked on studies designed to understand methods of improving the workflow though welfare offices, compared the outcomes of child day care programs in relation to their funding models and addressed juvenile justice issues.
In 1994, he completed post-graduate work in Medical Bio-Ethics and the Humanities at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and Einstein School of Medicine.
[9] From 1987 to 1991, Arshack worked as a trial attorney at the Legal Aid Society in New York City, where he represented thousands of clients and participated in training new lawyers.
[10] While still a young Legal Aid lawyer, Arshack was featured in the 1990 Ted Koppel documentary news report that followed a drug trial from beginning to end.
One sat at the table next to me and the other was wearing a black robe" (referring to then New York State Supreme Court Justice Leslie Crocker Snyder).
When Hoffman left the firm to become General Counsel at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in 2003,[13] Arshack formed Arshack, Hajek, and Lehrman, PLLC, which provides criminal defense to businesses and individuals, medical malpractice defense to physicians and hospitals, and counsel to businesses in complex commercial litigation; the firm works throughout the United States and internationally.
[14] In 2006, Arshack successfully represented actress and singer Chanti Nieves’s privacy interests, when she was surreptitiously videotaped by HBO’s reality show Family Bonds as she stood on a street corner in Manhattan.
[19] In 2013, Arshack was asked to join the legal team of the Aurora, CO "Dark Knight" movie theater shooter James Eagan Holmes, in an attempt to compel the Fox News reporter Jana Winter to appear before a judge in Colorado.
[21] In 2014, Arshack represented the single largest taxpayer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), who had been identified in a very public United Nations report prepared by UN area "experts" as a funder and supporter of rebel groups in that country.
[22][23] In 2013, Arshack represented Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, then the Deputy Consul General in New York, who was arrested on charges of illegally obtaining a work visa for her children’s nanny and paying her far less than the minimum wage.
In 2015, he traveled to Geneva in order to accept the Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize on behalf of his client, who remains imprisoned.
In 2018, Arshack served as consulting attorney for National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which represented Anne Bynum’s appeal against the state of Arkansas.
[35] His acceptance speech of the Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize on Abulkhair's behalf was published as an editorial in the Huffington Post.
Arshack’s pro bono legal work includes his role as Mass Defense Counsel to Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network.
He is a founder and was co-chair of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis Institutional Review Board, and has lectured on medical self-advocacy and legal rights for SHARE, a breast cancer self-help organization.