[1] After clerking at the Maryland Court of Appeals for a year (1977–1978), Zell joined Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Kampelman as an associate (1978–1981).
[2] After Douglas Feith left law practice to work at the Pentagon in 2001; Zell partnered with Bernel Goldberg to form Zell, Goldberg & Co., with offices in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and affiliate offices in Washington, DC, Russia and Europe.
In August 2017, Zell condemned counter-protesters at a gathering of hundreds of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.
[4] Zell blamed the counter-protesters for the violence at the gathering, stating that they represented the "ugly face of progressivism".
[4] In the 1980s, Zell developed an interest in Zionism and, after a series of visits to Israel, moved his family, in 1988, to the Israeli settlement of Alon Shvut in the West Bank.