3 minute read | 3 hour watch | June.17.2026
Crisis Text Line is a free, 24/7 confidential mental health support service available in English and Spanish across 23 countries.
We're honored to share the story of how they have expanded to meet growing demand – including through a combination with a platform serving Latin American youth that otherwise would have left a critical market without access to crisis support.
Learn more about Crisis Text Line and how Team Orrick is helping them increase their impact.
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DENA TRUJILLO (Crisis Text Line): The youth mental health crisis is currently one of the largest public health challenges that we have in the United States and globally.
Crisis Text Line is a free 24/7 non-judgmental, confidential support in English and Spanish. People can reach out for anything from anxiety to depression to bullying to loneliness to suicide. Young people don’t necessarily have access to clinical support or in-person mental health care and that is why tools like Crisis Text Line, where we can meet young people where they are and help them get the support and the de-escalation that they need, is so important.
We have had requests from people all over the world asking us to help partner with them and share our technology.
We had been supporting an organization called Aquí Estoy, the global Spanish service through WhatsApp. Last year, they came to us asking if we would consider acquiring them because they were not able to get the budget to meet the demand.
There is no other resource in Latin America or the Spanish-speaking Caribbean that is accessible in a way that young people can tap.
They actually had to turn away around 15,000 young people because they didn't have the legal frameworks that protected them based on all of the different parental controls and data laws across different countries. And I knew that as we were scaling globally, we needed more pro bono support.
SHERRY ZHOU (Orrick): The very first challenge we had was to figure out what it is. Is it a separate legal entity? The founder was based in Europe, and the customers and the users are mainly based in Latin America. So we know from the get-go that this is going to be international.
ENNY OLALEYE (Orrick): We were essentially approached to go over and review data protection laws from over 20 jurisdictions. Where we had offices where we operate in these jurisdictions, we were able to leverage our internal pro bono network of lawyers who were dedicated and passionate about this cause.
And fortunately enough, for jurisdictions where we did not have an Orrick presence, we were able to leverage our local counsel contacts in a variety of countries who were willing to help and assist on a pro bono basis.
DENA: In the next three to five years, we believe we can be in the place where 25% to 50% of the world has access to our services because of Orrick's support.
SHERRY: Working on a cross-border transaction like this is very rewarding and reminds me of why I wanted to be a lawyer in the first place — is to help people.
ENNY: Working on something so high impact felt incredibly rewarding. Real lives are being impacted.
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From navigating data protection laws across 20+ jurisdictions to advising on M&A and licensing, more than 20 Orrick attorneys across 8 practice groups have volunteered nearly 300 hours to support Crisis Text Line’s mission.