Job Opportunity: Legal Director

JOB OPPORTUNITY: Legal Director 

Fair Work Center seeks a Legal Director dedicated to advancing the rights of workers across the state through high quality direct representation, policy advocacy, and strategic initiatives. The Legal Director will help lead our organization’s efforts to ensure that low-wage, immigrant, and contingent workers know their rights and can enforce them. They will oversee a talented unionized staff of four and drive the organization’s legal strategies. We are looking for an attorney energized by the opportunity to strategically use their legal training to build power for working people in Washington. This position reports to the Executive Director and serves on the organization’s Leadership Team.

About Fair Work Center 

Our organization builds worker power through education, organizing, and enforcement. We work to raise and uphold standards in the workplace. And we fight for economic and racial justice in our communities. Our Base Building team trains hundreds of workers a year about their rights on the job. Our Legal Clinic works to ensure that workers know their rights under city, state, and federal law and that employers are held accountable to labor standards.

We provide free individual consultations, pro se assistance, representation in administrative enforcement processes, and maintain an active strategic litigation docket. Over the past five years we have served thousands of workers and have recovered millions of dollars in unpaid wages. In addition to direct representation our attorneys provide policy analysis, research, and enforcement strategy support campaigns to improve workplace conditions. .
Our partner organization Working Washington leads innovative campaigns organizing delivery workers in the gig economy, enforcing Seattle’s domestic worker bill of rights, and making Washington’s workplace laws among the best in the country. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic our organizations have advocated for hazard pay for frontline workers, health and safety enforcement, and access to unemployment for gig and immigrant workers. Together, we have a history of making transformative demands for working people and winning big.

 

Position Responsibilities

Docket & Team Management 

• Establish strategic direction for the Legal Clinic consistent with the organization’s commitment to racial equity
• Set the Clinic’s docket of individual, impact, and class cases 
• Provide direct supervision to the dockets of individual team members, including co-counseling as appropriate 
• Serve as lead counsel on strategic and complex cases 
• Establish and manage co-counseling relationships with plaintiffs’ firms on complex cases
• Serve as Affiliate Faculty to the Seattle University School of Law Workers’ Rights Clinic
• Maintain law practice management and compliance with ethical standards
• Manage program budget and grant reporting, overseeing team’s performance in alignment with organizational priorities and funding

Strategic Enforcement & Policy Advocacy  

• Develop the clinic’s strategic enforcement plan, including identifying potential opportunities for strategic enforcement through litigation, legislative reform, impact administrative advocacy, or coordination with the rest of the organization 
• Drive bold and creative legal advocacy efforts in response to emergent equity and access to justice issues 
• Direct clinic’s legal research, analysis, and drafting work in support of legislative and regulatory efforts related to current campaigns or other organizational priorities
• Developing team members’ abilities to effectively execute strategic enforcement initiatives connected to current campaigns and organizational priorities

Organizational Leadership

• Serve as a member of the Leadership Team, playing an active role in developing and implementing the overall vision and strategic direction of the organization 
• Support fundraising efforts and relationships with philanthropic and government funders to increase resources available for legal program
• Lead efforts to develop and manage relationships with a range of external stakeholders including legal services partners, the plaintiffs’ bar, enforcement agencies, and community partners

Candidate Qualifications 

Required 

• Demonstrated commitment to economic, racial and social justice
• Prior experience mentoring, supervising, and developing staff
• Excellent legal analysis and writing skills 
• Exemplary relationship building skills and demonstrated ability to work collaboratively in a multidisciplinary team 
• Strong strategic thinking skills and prior experience shaping organizational vision and goal setting
•  Demonstrated ability to develop and lead new strategic initiatives, including research, legislative and regulatory analysis, and policy development
• Admission to the bar in Washington, or ability and willingness to obtain admission in Washington as soon as possible
• Five to seven years of practice in labor and employment law

Preferred

• Proficiency in a second language
• Prior experience with workers centers or other similar community-based organizations with education or organizing programs

Salary Range: $90,000 – $110,000, commensurate with experience.

This is an overtime exempt management position based in our Seattle or Yakima office; it requires some evening and weekend work and occasional travel throughout the state. Our team is currently working remotely due to COVID-19. The position comes with robust benefits, including health insurance, vision, dental, retirement with automatic employer contribution, and commuter benefits. 

 

How to Apply

Interested applicants should submit a cover letter, resume, and writing sample (not to exceed 10 pages) to jobs@fairworkcenter.org with the applicant’s last name and “Legal Director” in the subject line. In your cover letter, let us know why you’re interested in this role and which skills you believe will make you successful in it. The priority deadline for submissions is January 7, 2022. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and we will accept applications until the position is filled.

 

Commitment to Equity – Fair Work Center is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We strongly encourage people from communities most negatively affected by historical and ongoing inequity to apply, particularly: people of color, immigrants, women and feminine- identified people, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people, and people with disabilities. We seek candidates whose lived experiences reflect the lived experiences of the workers we support. If you need disability, language or other accommodation in the application process, please contact Zhi Chen at zhi@fairworkcenter.org.